ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The Secretary of State was asked-

Sri Lanka

Jim Cunningham: What his most recent assessment is of the humanitarian situation of refugees in Sri Lanka; and if he will make a statement.

Michael Foster: Two weeks ago, I visited Sri Lanka to see for myself the situation of the 250,000 internally displaced people detained in camps. Conditions have improved there compared with my previous visit in April, with basic needs such as food and shelter being met. However, health care and humanitarian access remain inadequate and we are concerned about military oversight of the camps and family separations. We also believe that conditions will deteriorate during the monsoon season, which is about to start. While I was in Sri Lanka, I repeated the United Kingdom's call for freedom of movement for all the IDPs so that they can go back to host families, relatives or their places of origin.

Jim Cunningham: May I ask my hon. Friend whether he has been able to get a time scale for the Tamils to go back to their homes in Sri Lanka? Also, how has the aid been distributed?

Michael Foster: The Government of Sri Lanka were committed to having 80 per cent. of those detained in camps going back to their places of origin by the end of the year. To facilitate that process, I am pleased to announce today an allocation of £500,000 to the HALO Trust for mine surveillance and de-mining in the Mullaitivu area. That work has started and will make the area safe for homes and for land use for the people who were put in the camps.

Lee Scott: Will the Minister look into whether further pressure can be put on Sri Lanka by the Commonwealth? If Sri Lanka continues not to let people return or go home from the camps, perhaps it should be suspended from the Commonwealth.

Michael Foster: It is important that the international community makes clear its position with regard to the number of people still in the camps and the importance of freedom of movement. We believe that that is happening, but, as far as the Commonwealth's position is concerned, I know that the Government of Sri Lanka are keen to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in a couple of years' time. That might have some bearing on their response to the developments for people who are in the camps.

Siobhain McDonagh: May I thank the Minister for his statements and for his visit to Sri Lanka on behalf of my Tamil constituents? May I also ask his Department to support the EU Trade Commissioner's GSP-or generalised system of preferences-plus report, which was issued on Monday, to ensure that preferred status will be withdrawn from Sri Lanka should things continue as they are?

Michael Foster: My hon. Friend has long been an advocate for her Tamil constituents and I applaud her for her commitment. As regards the GSP plus and the announcement made this week by the European Commission, there is a process that should be followed to maintain the integrity of the GSP plus system. We believe that in the meantime the Government of Sri Lanka should look at the findings and act on them swiftly.

Malcolm Bruce: As someone who visited the camps earlier this year, along with you, Mr. Speaker, I welcome the Minister's report on the basic conditions in the camps. Does he agree with me, however, that the Sri Lankan Government would better serve their interests if they gave full unrestricted access to the camp to the media and all the agencies and fulfilled their promise to allow people to return home before Christmas? What are the chances of that happening?

Michael Foster: The right hon. Gentleman knows the situation well from his own experience and from his experience as Chairman of the Select Committee. I agree entirely with his assessment that it is in the Government of Sri Lanka's interest to allow open access to the media. During the visit that I undertook two weeks ago, I had people from the BBC with me. It had full access to camps and individuals within those camps to do whatever reporting it felt necessary. Let me give the right hon. Gentleman an indication of the scale of the transfer that is needed. We have had a request from the International Organisation for Migration for transport assistance to help 41,000 people from the camps go back to Mannar, Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi, in addition to the 32,000 who we know left the camps in September.

Eddie McGrady: I had the very distressing experience with the all-party group of visiting the camps at Menik farms zones 2 and 3 at Vavuniya. In spite of that distressing aspect, there was an uplifting side to the visit because of the attitude of the people and their hope for the future. Will the Minister ensure that any aid that is forthcoming from the Government is directed primarily at the welfare of the people in the camps and their displacement back to their own homes, which have been out of reach, to be joined with their families? Secondly-

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not wish to be discourteous to the hon. Gentleman, but I think that one question will do.

Michael Foster: When I was in Sri Lanka, I made it clear to the Government that from the end of this year, when the monsoon season was brought to a conclusion, we would no longer be funding aid for closed camps and that our aid would be directed towards facilitating movement from the camps. That includes the de-mining to which I have referred and means that I can announce £250,000 for predictable, safe and dignified transport for people from the camps back to host communities, as well as a further £220,000 to the Food and Agriculture Organisation to provide bushels of rice seeds to enable people to have a decent livelihood when they get back to their homes.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: The Minister has confirmed this morning that a package of rehabilitation measures is being put in place by the Department. That is welcome, but he has also confirmed that emergency aid will be redirected away from the camps. The Government also voted against the $2.5 billion International Monetary Fund package in July and are now considering ending the EU's special trade privileges that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned. Is that really the most constructive way to persuade the Sri Lankan Government to promote a long-term reconciliation process, and to meet their stated pledge that 80 per cent. of displaced people should be returned by Christmas? That is what members of the Sri Lankan diaspora, and all Sri Lankan people in the UK, desperately want.

Michael Foster: We were speaking up for all the people I saw in the camps two weeks ago. It was clear that they wanted to be returned to their homes as quickly as possible, but the nature of the closed camps, with their restrictions and military oversight, is wholly wrong. That is why our assistance will be geared to the de-mining, transport and livelihood programmes, as they will enable people to move safely and securely from the camps back to their homes, where they will be able to get on with their lives. I think that that is what the diaspora community here in the UK wants to hear.

East Africa

Andy Reed: What steps his Department is taking to alleviate food shortages in east Africa.

Laurence Robertson: What recent assessment he has made of levels of availability of food in east Africa; and if he will make a statement.

Gareth Thomas: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently announced an extra £39 million of additional humanitarian assistance to the region, bringing our total contribution this year to some £83 million. That will help to supply food aid, emergency nutrition, water and sanitation, and will be delivered by the World Food Programme and UNICEF, and agencies such as Oxfam and Médecins sans Frontières.

Andy Reed: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, and for the additional moneys that he has announced. However, he will know that it is 25 years since the first Band Aid concert brought the Ethiopian food crisis to our attention. Local Tearfund visitors say that even the weeds are not growing in some areas. This is a long-term problem, not just a short-term one. Will the Minister describe the specific steps that he is taking to address the long-term climate change issues affecting the region, and Ethiopia in particular, as well as the immediate food programmes that are so desperately needed?

Gareth Thomas: My hon. Friend makes an important point and I congratulate him on his work with Tearfund and other similar aid agencies in his constituency. He will recognise that we are in a very different place now from where we were some 25 years ago. There has been a substantial increase in the numbers of people getting help. The proportion of people in Ethiopia in need of emergency assistance is lower than 25 years ago, not least because of some of the support that we have provided through in-country productive safety net programmes and humanitarian assistance. We continue to work with African leaders to make sure that their voices are also heard in the climate change negotiations that are under way at the moment, and which we desperately hope will lead to a new global deal to replace Kyoto.

Laurence Robertson: Ethiopia is one of the worst affected areas. The Government have provided welcome emergency relief, but the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) made a good point when he spoke about the long-term problems. I spoke to the ambassador just a few minutes ago, and he stressed the importance of providing development aid. I understand that Ethiopia receives a smaller proportion of such aid than a number of other countries in the region. Will the Minister look at what can be done to provide the financial and technical assistance to Ethiopia so that these terrible famines do not keep happening?

Gareth Thomas: We continue to provide a substantial assistance programme to Ethiopia. I hope to visit the country shortly to see for myself the challenges the hon. Gentleman describes. When we published the White Paper in July we set out our determination to do all we can to help developing countries such as Ethiopia increase agricultural production. We are therefore increasing our research budget for the types of crops that can survive climate change and so prevent people from needing emergency support. We also want to put further investment into the type of social protection schemes that are already making a difference and preventing people from needing emergency assistance. We are determined to provide more humanitarian assistance, and will keep up the pressure on other international donors to do more to help countries like Ethiopia, and other countries in the region as well.

Sally Keeble: Does my hon. Friend agree that children who are hungry in east Africa face particular problems? Will he therefore commend the work of the Schools for Africa School Meal Deal, and the School Food Trust's Really Good School Dinner campaign? They provide practical support for children in school and community-based feeding schemes and also persuade children here about the importance of providing long-term support for children in developing countries.

Gareth Thomas: I certainly will praise the work of the organisation that my hon. Friend describes and has worked with. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who attended the launch of the programme that my hon. Friend describes, was also impressed by its work. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that we continue to work closely with organisations such as UNICEF which provide support to help to make sure that children are not forgotten in the delivery of emergency assistance, and that we help to tackle the levels of malnutrition that still exist among children in the region.

Michael Moore: The situation in east Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, is dire. We welcome the additional support that the Government have offered to the Governments there but, as the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) highlighted, it is 25 years since the famine that killed a million people. Is it not a scandal that the World Food Programme has barely half the funding that it needs to feed the 100 million people it estimates are starving, and is it not time to stop relying on emergency appeals and get proper funding in place for that programme?

Gareth Thomas: As I said in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) and other Members, we accept that a series of steps need to be taken. We have to continue to provide emergency assistance to organisations such as the World Food Programme, and indeed we continue to campaign internationally for more humanitarian assistance to be provided. At the same time, we need to put in place a series of further long-term steps to help to increase agricultural production in countries in east Africa and elsewhere so that they can better tackle their own needs, thereby preventing the need for emergency assistance. We have said that we will increase our agricultural research budget, but we also continue to put pressure on other donors, some in Europe and some outside Europe, to do more to increase humanitarian assistance and to put in place long-term development programmes to help countries away from the type of problems that we are discussing.

Ethical Investments

David Taylor: What ethical criteria are applied to investment decisions made by CDC Group plc.

Gareth Thomas: CDC capital is invested in accordance with CDC's updated investment code. It aims to ensure that CDC applies appropriately strong environmental, social and governance standards to its investment decisions. Specifically, it prohibits CDC investment in businesses involving hazardous products, endangered and protected wildlife, the production and trade of arms, gambling, pornography and tobacco products.

David Taylor: The United Nations, Hillary Clinton, NGOs and others have called for urgent investment in food production to relieve poverty in the developing world, yet CDC executives enjoy a bonus culture that would be the envy of Fred Goodwin. Will the Minister apply ethical tests to the CDC decisions that have led to just 5 per cent. of the development money received from the UK taxpayer going into agricultural projects, yet much more into financial services, shopping malls-

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I say to the Back Bencher of the Year that he is deservedly Back Bencher of the Year, but that was a "War and Peace" question, and I do not want "War and Peace" questions.

Gareth Thomas: My hon. Friend is right to highlight the need for more investment in agriculture, as other hon. Members have done in previous questions. We are working closely with the Americans. In particular, the G8 and others have committed more than $20 billion over the next three years for food security and agricultural development. We are committing some £1 billion over the next three years. With reference to CDC, it has invested in 33 agri-businesses, as well as a series of other businesses in Africa and other developing countries. We need it to continue to invest in those businesses to help to generate more jobs so that developing countries can plot their own path out of dependence on aid.

Andrew Mitchell: But the damning National Audit Office report last year found that Ministers failed to demand real evidence of the impact of CDC, and that this multi-billion business was overseen by the equivalent of just one and a half full-time members of staff from the Department. What is the Minister doing to get his act together and ensure that CDC delivers on the key development objectives that we expect?

Gareth Thomas: Unusually for the hon. Gentleman, he somewhat exaggerates the findings of the NAO report. Since its publication, we have put in place a further series of steps to respond to the NAO's concerns-in terms not only of monitoring pay, but of ensuring that there is independent verification of CDC's investment code. We have further asked CDC to shift more of its total investment into low-income countries and, particularly, into sub-Saharan Africa.

Copenhagen Summit

Helen Southworth: What steps the Government are taking to ensure equitable treatment of developing countries in negotiations which are taking place before the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Douglas Alexander: Climate change today poses the greatest risk to the poorest countries. To achieve a fair and equitable outcome at Copenhagen, it is therefore essential that the most vulnerable countries have a voice in the decisions that are taken. The UK has provided considerable financial and technical support to developing country negotiators and civil society, helping them to prepare for and engage in high-level meetings in the run-up to Copenhagen.

Helen Southworth: The world's poorest countries are already being hurt by the leading edge of climate change, and people are calling out for help. Will my right hon. Friend be absolutely resolute in making sure that their voice is heard at Copenhagen and we get urgent action on their behalf?

Douglas Alexander: Yes, I can give my hon. Friend the undertaking that she seeks. We have been tireless in our efforts to ensure that the voices of sub-Saharan African countries and other developing countries are heard at the negotiations. We welcome the engagement of Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia, speaking up for and representing the interests of the African Union, but only last month I travelled to Bangladesh with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to ensure that he was fully apprised of the clear linkage between the need to tackle dangerous climate change and the need to tackle global poverty.

Gary Streeter: Did the Secretary of State notice that the Government of the Maldives recently held a Cabinet meeting under water to highlight the risk to that country of climate change? Given that the Maldives is an Islamic, fully fledged democracy with strong links to this country, what steps are we taking to help them in their battle against climate change?

Douglas Alexander: The surest way to help the people of the Maldives and, indeed, all the developing world is to ensure that we get a global deal on carbon in Copenhagen. However, I hope that in the weeks between now and the summit we will see throughout the House a genuine consensus emerge on the key issue of development and climate finance, because although the Government have pledged that we recognise the need for genuinely additional resources to deal with the challenge of adaptation, sadly, that commitment has not yet been forthcoming from the Opposition.  [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. There are too many private conversations going on. Mr. Burt, a man of your legendary courtesy knows better.

John Robertson: What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with Nigeria about gas flaring; and can he do something about it? The people in that area are suffering from the pollution that it causes.

Douglas Alexander: My hon. Friend, who has a great deal of knowledge of the subject, leading, as I understand he does, the all-party group on Nigeria, is right to recognise the issue of gas flaring. There have been considerable challenges in the delta, and I understand that there are continuing discussions on the issue, but I shall write to him.

Andrew Mitchell: As I saw at the Poznan climate summit last year, representatives of developing countries are at a disadvantage, because they cannot afford to employ the hordes of lawyers and negotiators that developed countries hire. In the spirit of the right hon. Gentleman's call for a unified response throughout the House, will he look again at Conservative proposals for an advocacy fund to help poor countries to make their voices heard as effectively as possible throughout these vital forthcoming negotiations?

Douglas Alexander: I have heard the voices of developing countries, and they have said clearly and unequivocally that they do not want development funds rebadged in toto as climate finance funds. That is why we as a Government have made a commitment that only up to 10 per cent. of our official development assistance will be used as part of the public contribution to what we hope will be a global deal in Copenhagen. Sadly, that commitment has not been forthcoming from the Opposition, but if the hon. Gentleman is concerned about the need to listen to the voices of the poor, perhaps he will give that commitment now.

HIV Vaccine (Funding)

Evan Harris: What funding his Department is providing for research into an HIV vaccine for use in developing countries.

Michael Foster: The Department has committed a total of £78 million for the international AIDS vaccine initiative. That comprises £38 million from 1998 to 2007 and a further £40 million from 2008 to 2013. The United Kingdom's Government were the first to fund the IAVI, in 1998, and we have remained a major bilateral supporter, providing the long-term and predictable support that we believe is essential for vaccine development.

Evan Harris: I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, and I recognise the funding that has already gone in. Does he accept that the recent media coverage of the potential, yet-to-be-proven vaccine breakthrough in this area points up even more the huge need for funding to build capacity in vaccine research, as well as the huge rewards that would flow from success in this area?

Michael Foster: We gave a cautious welcome to the findings that have recently come from research in Thailand, for example. We believe that prevention must be at the heart of our approach to dealing with HIV/AIDS, and that the search for a viable, effective and accessible vaccine must be the backbone of our approach to prevention.

Tom Clarke: Will my hon. Friend and his ministerial colleagues use their influence to ensure that people, particularly in east Africa, including Uganda, are not encouraged to pull out of the necessary treatment because of the terrible picture in terms of the food shortage?

Michael Foster: My right hon. Friend has had a long-term interest in international development, and I pay tribute to that. I entirely agree with his sentiment that it is important that people who have embarked on treatment continue with it if we are to deal with the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

Copenhagen Summit

Charles Kennedy: What recent discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on the international development aspects of the forthcoming Copenhagen climate change summit; and if he will make a statement.

Douglas Alexander: The General Affairs and External Relations Council has two sessions each year on development issues. Climate change was a focus of the May meeting, and we will again be looking at climate change in the November meeting, as well as ensuring that we are represented at these meetings. I take numerous opportunities to discuss the road to Copenhagen with my EU counterparts.

Charles Kennedy: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply. Does he agree, however, that it is important that developed countries, including our European counterparts, show sensitivity to the developing world as regards climate change implications from the vantage point of the developed world? Will he therefore stress to them his personal support-and, I hope, that of the Government more widely-for the 10:10 campaign, which will feature in my colleagues' Liberal Democrat-led debate later today?

Douglas Alexander: The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right in recognising that there needs to be a genuine engagement with the developing countries. That was one of the reasons I recently travelled to India to engage with dialogue there on the issue of climate change. In relation to the 10:10 campaign, I can confirm that my Department has signed up to that campaign; that is a powerful signal of the continuing commitment of several of us to tackle this issue.  [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I recognise that Members on both sides of the House are excited about the approach of Prime Minister's questions, but it is very discourteous for Members to witter away when a question is being asked or an answer is being given. The public do not like it-and, as I have said, neither, frankly, do I.

Mark Durkan: I welcome the determination expressed by the Secretary of State, but what confidence can he give us that the rights and needs of vulnerable developing countries will be better protected in negotiations on climate change at Copenhagen than they were at the world trade negotiations?

Douglas Alexander: My hon. Friend is right to recognise that there are intertwined challenges of dealing with dangerous climate change and with global poverty. Unless we are successful in Copenhagen in securing a global deal, then dangerous climate change threatens the attempt to make poverty history for millions of our fellow citizens around the world. That is why we have worked so hard to ensure that the voices of the poorest countries, as well as the richest, are heard in Copenhagen this December.

Afghanistan

Ann Winterton: What priorities he has set for his Department's work in Afghanistan.

Douglas Alexander: The Department for International Development is supporting the work of the Afghanistan national development strategy to establish a more effective state; to encourage economic growth, providing alternatives to poppy growing; and to promote stability and development in Helmand province. We work with the wider UK Government strategy for the region to strengthen state institutions, counter the threat of violent extremism, and produce sustainable economic growth.

Ann Winterton: Are not storage and distribution systems, and a marketing strategy including minimum guaranteed prices, essential to support wheat production in Afghanistan, because otherwise we run the risk of over-production there, collapsing the price and therefore destroying the credibility of international aid?

Douglas Alexander: These are exactly the issues that we are discussing at the moment with both the Government of Afghanistan and Governor Mangal in Helmand province. We welcome the fact that we have moved to a position in which more than half the provinces in Afghanistan are poppy-free. Amidst all the complexity, there is a basic equation: where we can deliver security, we are more likely to reduce the level of opium production. That is why we welcome not just the number of poppy-free provinces but the fact that Governor Mangal is leading the initiative on wheat seed production.

Moldova

Alun Michael: What steps he is taking to assist economic, cultural and democratic development in the Republic of Moldova following the recent elections in that country.

Michael Foster: The Department for International Development is holding discussions with the new Government of Moldova about our assistance programme. Indications are that the new Government wish to see ongoing support for their national development strategy, economic development in rural areas, conflict resolution and reform of the social assistance system.

Alun Michael: Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, very small and weighed down by the conflict in Transnistria, and it depends greatly on citizens working abroad, particularly in Europe. Will my hon. Friend ensure that now the election crisis has been resolved, we focus on enabling Moldova to prepare itself to join the European Union?

Michael Foster: The UK will of course support the new Government of Moldova, because it is not in our interest to have an unstable, impoverished and divided Moldova on the border of the EU.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked-

Engagements

Crispin Blunt: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 21 October.

Gordon Brown: Last night and this morning, I have been meeting the Northern Ireland First Minister and Deputy First Minister on the devolution of policing and justice to Northern Ireland. I have been in touch with all party leaders in Northern Ireland, and I am now sending to all of them and placing in the House of Commons Library my proposals for a financial settlement that is designed to make possible the completion of the final stage of devolution in Northern Ireland. We will of course keep the House fully updated. Our aim is a peaceful, more secure and more prosperous Northern Ireland.
	In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further meetings today.

Crispin Blunt: Reigate is proud to be home to 579 bomb disposal squadron of the Territorial Army. Last Wednesday, when the Prime Minister was making his statement on Afghanistan, it was being told that it could not train until 1 April next year, and its TA centre is under threat of closure. What effect does he think those measures will have on the recruitment and retention of those vital volunteer specialists?

Gordon Brown: I made it clear last Wednesday when I made my statement that we would ensure that our resources were devoted to the campaign in Afghanistan, and any member of the Territorial Army who is going to Afghanistan in the next few months will secure the training that is necessary. As the Chief of the General Staff has made clear, the reason why the changes have been necessary is that the Army has recruited more regular soldiers in the past year-9,000 extra compared with 7,000 in previous years. That is why, with those resources being devoted to Afghanistan, we have to focus on those people who are going to go to Afghanistan. They will not only have the pre-deployment training-I have answered the Leader of the Opposition on that-but everybody who is going to Afghanistan will be individually assessed to make sure that they have all the training that is necessary.

Lindsay Roy: Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the NHS in Fife on its preparations for swine flu vaccinations, and can he update the House on progress on such vaccinations across the UK?  [Interruption.]

Gordon Brown: It is right that the House learns the progress that is being made on vaccinating those people who might be at risk of swine flu, and it is right that I tell people that for both those who are at risk and health service workers we are starting the process of vaccination immediately. It is also right to say that we have been ahead of the world in purchasing the vaccines that are necessary and in making sure that those people who need treatment with antivirals have it available at the earliest opportunity. I hope that there is all-party support for making available those vaccinations to people who need them.

David Cameron: The planned strikes at the Royal Mail will be bad for the economy and business, bad for customers and, above all, bad for all those who work for the Royal Mail and care about its future. Will the Prime Minister condemn these strikes and join me in sending a direct message to the trade union to call this strike off?

Gordon Brown: I said exactly that last week-that it was counter-productive for there to be a strike-but I think it is right for us in this House to urge negotiation and mediation. Our role must be to encourage the negotiations that are taking place, to urge people to go to ACAS when that becomes the right thing to do and to make sure that we do everything in our power to get a negotiated settlement to something that arises from the 2007 modernisation plan. It is in nobody's interest that this strike goes ahead.

David Cameron: Peter Mandelson said that abandoning part-privatisation of the Royal Mail would be
	"irresponsible and an abdication"
	of an important "commitment", and that it
	"would...threaten the sustainability of the network "-[ Official Report, House of Lords, 11 May 2009; Vol. 710, c. 834-848.]
	Yet five months after the Postal Services Bill left the House of Lords it still has not come to the House of Commons. Can the Prime Minister tell us why he has allowed this appalling display of weakness?

Gordon Brown: There is no commercial buyer for the Royal Mail-the right hon. Gentleman must understand that. This is nothing to do with the dispute which, as I am trying to explain to him, is about the 2007 modernisation plan. In most areas of the country, the 2007 modernisation plan has been implemented. In some areas, it still has to be implemented. We must encourage all those in the postal services to go ahead and implement it. We are the Government who made possible £1.2 billion in loans for that to happen. Let us-on both sides of the House-urge the negotiation and mediation that is necessary to avoid an unproductive strike.

David Cameron: What the Prime Minister has just said is complete nonsense. He did not stop the Bill because he could not sell the Royal Mail; he stopped it because he could not sell it to his own Back Benchers. Only last week he was telling us what a wonderful time it is to sell the Tote, the Dartford crossing, the channel tunnel rail link and the student loan book. Everybody knows that the reason why he dropped the Bill is that his Back Benchers will not support it. Just for once, why does he not admit that?

Gordon Brown: We have-rightly so, and it should be acknowledged-announced a disposals programme for all the assets that I mentioned last week, and we will go ahead with that. However, I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that this is nothing to do with the dispute at the moment. The dispute is about the 2007 modernisation plan. He had a shadow Minister yesterday saying that he did not know whether, if a Conservative Government came into power, they would be able to sell the Post Office either.

David Cameron: The Prime Minister gesticulates, but our view is very clear: bring forward the Bill and we will support it. Why has he not got the guts to do that? The fact is that this Prime Minister is incapable of giving a straight answer to a straight question. By the way, he says there is no connection between the strikes that we see and the weakness he showed in withdrawing that Bill. Does he agree that since the Government abandoned part-privatisation of the Royal Mail, union militancy has actually got worse?

Gordon Brown: As a result of the modernisation plan, 40,000 jobs have gone in the Royal Mail. The right hon. Gentleman may wish to seek to bring the industrial relations of the Royal Mail into the political arena in the way that he is doing now, but it would be far better if the Conservative party and other parties encouraged negotiation and, if necessary, arbitration on this matter. I repeat to him: the 2007 modernisation is at the heart of this dispute and that is what has got to be moved forward. Already, large numbers of jobs have had to go as part of that. I also say this to him: the Bill that came before this House is nothing to do with the dispute.

David Cameron: The Prime Minister says that we must not bring this strike into the political arena, but the fact is that it is in the political arena, not least because the communication workers pay half his bills- [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Leader of the Opposition must be heard.

David Cameron: The Prime Minister keeps saying that there is no connection between the Bill and the action that we are seeing from the trade union, yet his own Business Minister, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden), said yesterday in the House of Commons that
	"since the Government said that we would not proceed with the Bill...we have seen...a return to the destructive pattern of industrial disputes".-[ Official Report, 20 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 789.]
	Even his Minister says that there is a connection. Is it not the case that this trade union can sense weakness, and it sees weakness in this Prime Minister and this Government?

Gordon Brown: I would have thought that a Conservative Opposition would be trying to ensure that this strike did not take place. I would have thought that they would say that people should negotiate and that there should be arbitration if necessary. I would have thought that they would have repeated with me that this is a counter-productive strike and that it could be resolved only by proper negotiation and arbitration. I would urge the right hon. Gentleman to reflect on his comments as to whether anything that he is saying is making it easier for us to solve what is a difficult dispute.

David Cameron: The way to stop these strikes and this militancy is to show some leadership, some backbone and some courage. Are we really going to spend another six months with a Prime Minister who cannot give a straight answer, who cannot pass his own legislation, and who sits in his bunker not even able to decide what sort of biscuits he wants to eat? Does he not understand that stopping these strikes will take some courage and leadership, and is it not clear that he has none of that to offer?

Gordon Brown: The Conservative party has been wrong on every issue affecting the British economy. Conservatives were wrong on the nationalisation of Northern Rock; they were wrong on the rescue of the banking system; they were wrong on tackling unemployment; they were wrong on helping to protect people against mortgage repossessions; they were wrong on the fiscal stimulus; and they were wrong on international co-operation. On every economic issue, they have not shown any leadership. They were wrong on the recession and they are wrong on recovery.

Rosie Cooper: May I begin by thanking the Prime Minister for meeting some West Lancashire residents and discussing their issues? They told him about the failure to develop the town centre in Skelmersdale and transport issues such as the Ormskirk bypass-really important local issues. Does he agree that we must continue to invest in people and communities and in delivering such services, aiding regeneration and growth and not cutting services, which should not be on the agenda today?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I was pleased to visit her area in the past few days and talk about regeneration there. I appreciated the opportunity to meet the West Lancashire residents in her constituency and talk about the challenge of regeneration for the future. We can regenerate our economies only if we invest in recovery. We cannot do so with a party that says all the time that we should remove the fiscal stimulus. The only way forward for this economy at the moment is to maintain the fiscal stimulus and ensure that we have growth in the economy.

Nicholas Clegg: In June, and again in July, I asked the Prime Minister whether he would do the right thing and break up the biggest banks. Yesterday, the Governor of the Bank of England also repeated his view that the banks should be split up. Is the Governor wrong?

Gordon Brown: The reforms that we are bringing into the banking system will include greater competition in banking. We will have a judgment from the European Commission soon, which we are supporting, that will allow more competition in British banking. As for the restructuring of the banking system and whether there should be investment banks on one side and retail-only banks on the other, the right hon. Gentleman must remember that Northern Rock was effectively a retail bank and it collapsed. Lehman Brothers was effectively an investment bank without a retail bank and it collapsed. The difference between retail and investment banks is not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is that banks have been insufficiently regulated at a global level and we have to set the standards for that for the future. We will be doing that at the G20 Finance Ministers summit in a few weeks' time.

Nicholas Clegg: The basic failings that let the banks bring this economy to its knees are still in place. In fact, the position is worse than it was before. The banks are increasingly operating like a cartel, they are underwritten by the taxpayer, they have fewer competitors and they are now paying themselves eye-watering bonuses while the taxpayers who bailed them out are losing their jobs. If the Prime Minister will not make up his mind about splitting up the banks, does he at least agree that as long as those banks have a blank cheque from the taxpayer it is right to consider imposing an additional tax on their profits?

Gordon Brown: I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong on both counts, and wrong again. The basic fact is that we expect that when we have completed the restructuring of the banks the taxpayer will benefit financially from that, not lose money. His assumption that somehow we will lose money is wrong: we are determined to make money out of this. On the restructuring of the banks, competition regulations will require the competition that is necessary in the banking system.
	The right hon. Gentleman says that the situation is worse than it was last year, but last year banks in Britain threatened to collapse entirely. We have restructured the banking system and we will continue to do so, so that it serves customers properly. I hope that he, unlike the Conservatives, will support our measures to stimulate the economy.

Paul Flynn: Why should our brave soldiers be asked to put their lives at risk to re-elect the corrupt thief Karzai?

Gordon Brown: I do not accept what my hon. Friend is saying. We have an electoral process in Afghanistan that has revealed that, where there is fraud and where there has been malpractice, there has to be a new election. We have an election process in Afghanistan that, despite the fact that the Taliban insurgency tried to prevent an election from taking place, had millions of people voting. Our job is to help the infant Afghan democracy, and that is what we will continue to do. I think that hon. Members will have seen, from the comments by President Obama and all the European leaders yesterday, that we are determined to do what we can to support the security during that election period, and to make sure that, by training the Afghan forces themselves, our troops can eventually come home.

Paul Rowen: Springhill hospice, in my constituency, last week celebrated its 20th anniversary. I am sure that the Prime Minister will want to join me in congratulating Margaret Geoghan and others on their work. However, hospices are struggling in the recession, due to dwindling fundraising. What additional help can the Prime Minister offer the hospice movement?

Gordon Brown: I understand the work of the hospice movement. Obviously, I have been in contact with many people who work in it, and try to help. We are trying to give the hospice movement more money to enable it to do its job, and we are looking at what more we can do in future. I thank the hon. Gentleman's constituents for the work that they do. I understand that this area of health care has not had the resources that it needs in the past and will need greater support in the future. We will do what we can to support a movement that gives dignity to people in the last years and months of their lives.

Lynne Jones: Will the Prime Minister commit all Departments and Government-controlled organisations to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent. by the end of 2010? After all, what chance do we have of achieving challenging targets for later years if we do not take this opportunity now?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Departments have a responsibility, and so do all public organisations-and I know that many commercial companies want to do this-but there can be no substitute for an agreement in Copenhagen. If we do not get an agreement in Copenhagen, the world will drift backwards, not move forwards, so I am determined to work with other leaders over the next few months and to go to Copenhagen to make sure that we can make progress at this vital time. I believe that there is support in all parts of the House for doing so.

Graham Brady: Why should my constituents pay more tax so that the Prime Minister's can have their council tax frozen?

Gordon Brown: The purpose of devolution, whether to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or London, is to allow those people in those areas who are represented to make the decisions that affect their lives. If they make these decisions by doing one thing, it is at the cost of their ability to do other things.

Jacqui Smith: Over the past month, I have been able to visit every Sure Start children's centre in my constituency and to hear the parents' and children's wishes for the future of those centres. One of the children wished that his centre could get a rabbit; one of the parents wished that every child could achieve their potential but many parents are fearful about the plans of the Conservative party to cut support for their children. What will my right hon. Friend do to ensure that their wishes can be fulfilled, but that their fears will not be realised?

Gordon Brown: This allows me to thank my right hon. Friend for everything she did to make Sure Start possible in the first place. I think that all Members of the House will acknowledge that Sure Start has been pushed forward in the past 10 years. There are now 3,000 Sure Start centres across the country; our aim is 3,500 Sure Start centres. That means roughly five or six in every constituency. I would say to those who are thinking of cutting the Sure Start budget that they are making a grave mistake-for the education and learning of young children, the needs of their parents and the stability of these communities. We will keep the Sure Start centres; I am afraid that the Conservative party wants to cut them.

Michael Moore: It is nearly 30 years since the Conservatives decided that pensioners did not deserve the same annual increase in their incomes as people who were in work. Does it not pain the Prime Minister that after 12 years of a Labour Government, pensioners are being told that it may still be six years before the earnings link is restored?

Gordon Brown: As a result of the other measures that we are taking, pensioners have received more than an earnings link would have granted them, because they have the winter allowance, free television licences, national concessionary bus travel and pension credit, and this year, even though inflation is around zero, the pension will rise by 2.5 per cent.

Stephen Hepburn: I welcome the fact that pleural plaque victims in Scotland and Northern Ireland have been promised the right to compensation. May I ask the Prime Minister what he is going to do for the pleural plaque victims in England and Wales?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I offered yesterday to meet a delegation of Members of Parliament concerned about pleural plaques, and that I will do in the next few days.

Peter Bone: In 2005 Tony Blair surrendered Mrs. Thatcher's EU rebate. Next year we will be paying £4 billion more to the EU than we did last year. Is that (a), because we want to be seen as good Europeans; is it (b), because we want to subsidise French, Spanish and Irish farmers-or is it perhaps (c), because that is the price that we have to pay to let Tony Blair become El Presidente of Europe?

Gordon Brown: It was a negotiated settlement, because we are part of Europe: 60 per cent. of our trade is with Europe, 3 million jobs depend on our membership of the European Union and 750,000 companies trade with the European Union. I would have thought that at this time, when we need an export-led recovery which will include trading with the rest of Europe, instead of disparaging our membership of the European Union the Opposition should be saying that it is an absolutely important element of the economic future of our country.

Jim Dobbin: I declare a personal interest in the subject matter of this question. The Prime Minister will be aware of a report launched this week by Diabetes UK that indicates that up to 7 million people have contracted pre-diabetes, which makes them 15 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. What can the Government do to encourage our communities to eat more healthily throughout the coming years and try to prevent this serious illness?

Gordon Brown: Our proposal to deal with type 2 diabetes is to offer adults between the ages of 40 and 74 an assessment of their risk of developing it. That will be a major means by which we can identify the disease, help people to get on better diets and, potentially, deal with kidney failure as well as diabetes. There is a nationwide drive to deal with obesity, which is an issue that my hon. Friend has raised. A key factor, of course, is type 2 diabetes. The Change4Life programme, which was set up by the former Health Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), is one of the means by which we can address this. I hope that we can publicise the existence of that programme for everybody who is a diabetes sufferer.

Peter Robinson: I welcome the Prime Minister's decision to publish his proposals for funding policing and justice in Northern Ireland. Setting aside how he intends to assist in dealing with foreseeable but inescapable pressures, would he give us his views on how the Government will assist if unforeseen emergency circumstances arise, so that the Northern Ireland Executive will not have to raid their budget for health, education, housing and other critical elements?

Gordon Brown: I praise the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland for the way in which we have discussed all the issues that will affect the devolution of policing and justice. I also praise all the party leaders in Northern Ireland, whom I have met to discuss this issue, and thank all those who have been involved in meeting me and others to discuss how we can progress the devolution of policing and justice. This is the final stage of the devolution settlement for Northern Ireland, and it must be accompanied by a financial settlement that makes it possible for Northern Ireland to address its security and policing needs. We have made provision in the letter that I have sent-I believe that the Opposition parties will now have a copy available-for the reserve to be available if exceptional security needs arise in any one year. We have done so this year because of what happened with the killing of soldiers and the killing of PC Carroll; we will do so in future years if such an emergency or difficulty arises. I have made that clear in the letter that I have sent to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. A secure Northern Ireland is the key to a more prosperous Northern Ireland. We will take no risks with the security of Northern Ireland.

Ronnie Campbell: The capitalist system and the banks have made a gigantic mess not only of the world economy but of ours as well, so why are the public services, the pensioners, the poor and the working class people of this country having to pay for it? Will the Prime Minister ensure that the next Labour Government will do something about the banks, so that this never happens again?

Gordon Brown: The reason why we took action on the banks was not to save the bankers but to ensure that ordinary people's savings, jobs and mortgages, and the businesses on which jobs depend, were secure. There is not one saver who has lost money as a result of the failure of a British bank to make good its promise to pay money to savers. Equally, my hon. Friend is absolutely right: the banks have failed us in many ways. That is why we are making the necessary reforms, but we have to make these changes globally to make them work. Otherwise, banks will just move from one country to another. We have to create a system of remuneration that has global implications for all banks, rather than one that applies to just one country. We have to ensure that the banks will again lend the money necessary for industry and for home owners, and that is exactly the Government's policy.

James Gray: The Prime Minister has often emphasised how important it is that all the participants in the forthcoming and vital Copenhagen talks should be ready to compromise in order to achieve consensus. Will he tell us on which British principle he is ready to compromise? How about the third runway at Heathrow?

Gordon Brown: Aviation emissions will come within a total of emissions that have to be met. We have said that if we can get a climate change agreement and Europe is able to sign up to it, we will go to 30 per cent. emissions instead of 20 per cent. emissions. So we are prepared to go further on the level of emissions that we will agree to, if we can get a global agreement. Far from not being ready to compromise, we are therefore ready to do so further if we can get an international agreement. I hope that, instead of criticising us, the hon. Gentleman will support us in the negotiations.

Gordon Banks: Will my right hon. Friend make a commitment that he will do nothing to make it more difficult for women approaching state retirement age to secure their state pension?

Gordon Brown: It is absolutely remarkable that a political party can say that it is going to tell people in their 50s that they have to retire later, while at the same time insisting on giving the richest estates in the country £2 billion extra in tax cuts. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Richard Ottaway: The Director of Public Prosecutions recently published his interpretation of the law on assisted suicide. Whatever his views on the subject, does the Prime Minister agree that it is not for the public prosecutor to decide on the criminal law of this country? Will the right hon. Gentleman table a substantive motion on the Director of Public Prosecutions' proposals so that we can ascertain the will of the House on this matter?

Gordon Brown: The process that we have is right: the law is settled by Parliament. I have made my views clear on this, and there have been debates in Parliament. The law is settled by Parliament, and if people interpret that law, it must be in line with the decision of Parliament. That is where I stand.

David Anderson: As someone who was engaged with working people in Northern Ireland for 20 years, may I tell my right hon. Friend how much I welcome his statement? I congratulate him and the leaders of all the parties in Northern Ireland on the great work that they have done to get us to where we are. Will he tell us exactly what we are going to do next to ensure that the plans are implemented as quickly as possible?

Gordon Brown: I hope that, when the leaders of the Northern Ireland parties take the proposals back to their parties, they will find that they command support. The next stage is a consultation with the community in Northern Ireland, and that is for the Northern Ireland Executive themselves to trigger. I hope that, in addition to the legislation being passed in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the community consultation will yield the ability of the Northern Ireland parties to have a cross-community vote and to go ahead with the devolution of policing and justice. I believe that we in this Parliament will do everything in our power to make that possible, with legislation that would necessarily come to this House, but it is now for the parties of Northern Ireland to respond to the proposals that we have made. I have seen from the speech made this morning by the First Minister of Northern Ireland, and from the response of the Deputy First Minister, that they are ready to move forward now that the financial proposals have been agreed.

Gary Streeter: Given that teachers' pay is set nationally, can the Prime Minister explain why Devon schools received £375 per pupil less than the national average? Will he look again at the funding formula and bring to an end this discrimination against children educated in the rural south?

Gordon Brown: I am happy to look at the hon. Gentleman's question in relation to his constituency, but perhaps he would look at the bigger issue. If his party goes ahead and cuts education dramatically, not just his constituency but every constituency would be affected. At some point, the Conservative party has to face up to the fact that it is ready to cut Sure Start, cut educational expenditure in schools, cut the capital building programme, cut education maintenance allowances and, of course, cut away all help for the unemployed. They have been wrong on the recession and they are going to be wrong on the recovery.

Katy Clark: The Prime Minister will be well aware of the long campaign to get employment rights for temporary and agency workers. Will he indicate when we are going to get that legislation on the statute book?

Gordon Brown: A consultation period has started. I gather it finishes in the next few weeks, and then we will make the final decisions.

Tim Farron: The Government's cancer reform strategy states that no cancer patient should live further than 45 minutes' travelling distance from their nearest cancer treatment unit. Yet in my constituency, no cancer patient lives within 45 minutes' travelling distance of the nearest cancer unit, in Preston. We as a local community are campaigning to bring a cancer unit to our hospital in Kendal. Will the Prime Minister agree to meet cancer patients, myself and local NHS workers to ensure that we get a cancer unit in Kendal as a matter of urgency?

Gordon Brown: The Secretary of State for Health will be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, but he knows that these decisions are made by local clinicians, not by central Government. We have made proposals to bring diagnostic services nearer the community, so that people may not in future have to travel to hospital for their diagnosis and care. That is something that we have proposed should be introduced in future years, but again, that depends on our willingness to fund the capital investment in the national health service, which I hope the hon. Gentleman will support.

Points of Order

Denis MacShane: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Member, who is an immensely experienced Member, knows that points of order come later.  [Interruption.] Denis, I am wrong.  [Interruption.] Order. I say to the House that I am wrong.

Denis MacShane: Even Homer can nod, Mr. Speaker. There are reports in the papers this week that an e-mail of this House was used to alter the Wikipedia entry of the leader of the British Conservatives in the European Parliament in order to remove references to his membership of what the chief rabbi of Poland called "a neo-Nazi party". I would like you to ask whether it is possible for the House computer authorities to investigate this matter, and either make a statement or place a report in the Library, because no e-mail of this House should be used to whitewash away any massacre of Jews by anyone in support of neo-Nazi organisations in Europe.

Mr. Speaker: May I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I was wrong, but I am afraid that he is wrong, too, which I say in all solemnity. I recognise that he feels extremely strongly about this matter and he has put his views on the record several times-doubtless he will do so again-but I am afraid that that is not a point of order, but a point of debate.

David Drew: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Just before the recess, the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Secretary of State in person announced an inquiry into Gloucestershire county council, and in particular its relationship with national challenge schools. On Monday of this week, one of my schools, the Vale of Berkeley college, was announced for closure. As yet, I have not seen the report from Mr. Badman. I have asked both the DCSF and the local authority for a copy of the full report. Given that you, Mr. Speaker, protect Back Benchers, will you as a matter of urgency look into why that report has yet to be made available?

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that that also is not a point of order, and I have a hunch that the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), as an experienced and assiduous attender, is well aware of that fact. However, he has firmly registered his views on the matter, on the record, and I feel sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard what he has to say. If there are no further points of order, perhaps we can move on to the next business.

Local Health Services and Democratic Involvement

Motion for leave to introduce a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

John Pugh: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require Primary Care Trusts to obtain prior approval for their spending plans; to require Primary Care Trusts to present an annual spending plan to certain local authorities for approval; to provide resolution arrangements in the event of Primary Care Trusts failing to secure the consent of the relevant local authority; and for connected purposes.
	Judging by the Bill's placing in the parliamentary timetable, I harbour few illusions about the odds on it making it to the statute book, unless fellow Members, or you, Mr. Speaker, are so impressed-clearly, you are not-by its obvious merit as to vary existing procedure. However, my Bill encapsulates a huge issue in this and the past few Parliaments: the democratic deficit in the NHS-the local NHS.
	The local NHS is a huge taxpayer-funded service, affects everyone, is important to everyone, but is sadly totally remote from democratic decision making. Those who take the trouble to get elected to secure a mandate can make decisions about who goes to jail, who goes to war, who is taxed, who has power and who does not. We can make decisions about people's daily behaviour: what they may say, whom they may marry, what they may buy and sell, where they may smoke and what, but not about what happens in the local NHS in their area. Those decisions are made by enlightened quangos or trusts, and they are usually a combination of medical experts and appointees who may or may not bring relevant expertise with them. They decide what drugs are available, which hospitals or hospital departments stay open, where services are, how GPs and dentists shape up, and what after-hours care exists. All those issues mean a lot to some people part of the time, and much to all people most of the time.
	MPs can protest at the actions of such bodies, as I did when my town lost its children's A and E service. We can plead for their intervention, as when we cajoled them into producing plans for a minor injuries unit. We can present petitions, and express concerns. But the thought of allowing anyone who has gone through the sordid process of getting elected anywhere near decision making has given successive Governments the vapours, and has been resisted hook, line and sinker, much to the satisfaction of hospital chief executives and health service managers.
	Afraid to speak their minds, Ministers and mandarins have offered instead various sops. There were the community health councils-well-understood sounding boards, but bolshie enough to get abolished. There were PALS-patient advice and liaison service-the short-lived, worthy but ineffectual feedback collector. Now there are the mysteriously named and constructed LINks-local involvement networks. All were set up by successive pieces of legislation with the function of scrutinising, informing, listening, collating, airing and hearing, involving and consulting-anything, but never deciding.
	All that is done on the mistaken assumption that the general public are too stupid to notice that they have absolutely no power over what happens in their local NHS. When an MP raises in this place decisions that their constituents oppose, and tasks a Minister about it, time and again the Minister, with almost comic sincerity, in Pontius Pilate fashion, says, "This is a matter for local decision making," as though "local decision making" implied that local people-outside the quango circle-had any part in it.
	That is a perversion of democracy, but it satisfies the professionals, who like the prescription and genuinely fear the alternative-democratic accountability. It would be refreshing if Ministers said what is on their, or the Department of Health's, mind-what they really thought, but dare not say. What they think is that democratic decision making would lead to unworkable populism, that expert government is better than public governance, and possibly that the calibre of those elected is not up to the job-they may be too stupid or ill informed, even though many of the elected reappear on health quangos as appointees wearing different hats. They really think that this public service wants no genuine, local public voice-that that way madness lies. If a Minister actually said that, such a refreshing overt, clear declaration would flush out this argument for the fatuous nonsense that it is.
	Democratically elected representatives can only espouse naked unthinking populism-which is what is feared-when they do not have to pick up the tab, run the budget or bear the consequences. Democratic bodies put up taxes, impose parking charges, change refuse arrangements, declare war, cut benefit and close facilities. I see no reason why they cannot make tough decisions, and no evidence to support that view. Democratic bodies also make a host of very technical decisions, competently, when aided by good professional advice.
	For the reasons that I have given-solid and good reasons-the Liberal Democrats are very comfortable with the idea of elected health boards. We believe in removing appointees who have been whisked smugly, or in some cases humbly, into power because they have impressed some other appointee who has previously been whisked smugly or humbly into power, and replacing them with elected individuals who have had to impress the citizens served by the local trust, who gain community support and approval, and who, ultimately, justify their position to the people whom they serve.
	My Bill is simply a bridge to that position. It involves even less change, and uses existing institutions. I propose that primary care trusts, as currently constituted, lay before the health scrutiny committees of existing councils, as currently constituted, their annual plans and their big decisions-not for scrutiny or consultation, but for approval, agreement and amendment. I propose a kind of democratic lock on the local NHS: a move beyond mere consultation. I propose a genuine redistribution of power from one existing institution to another existing, established institution. This is such a good idea that I believe that the model has already been embraced voluntarily in some areas.
	There are likely to be disputes of substance between the PCTs and the health scrutiny committees. There are likely to be sharp differences on how to commit existing resources, given that resources are always limited. The PCT may suggest that maternity services be decommissioned, and the tribunes of the people-the council-may object. What one wants, the other may regard as plain unsafe. The Bill therefore contains a resolution procedure including, eventually, a reference upwards to the Secretary of State as a last resort.
	I genuinely see no reason why this model cannot work-in fact, it does work- and produce not simply good decisions, but good decisions with a popular mandate. That would be nice. Our NHS could be reclaimed, without micro-management or meddling, and not with government by experts but with popular government, expertly informed.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That Dr. John Pugh, Andrew George, Annette Brooke, Paul Holmes, Andrew Stunell, Mark Hunter, Mr. Adrian Sanders and Mr. David Heath present the Bill
	Dr. John Pugh accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 October and to be printed (Bill 152).

Speaker's Statement

Mr. Speaker: Before we move to the main business-the Opposition day motion in the name of the Liberal Democrats-I have a very brief and, I hope, pertinent statement to make.
	I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) for raising on a point of order on Monday the question of whether Members who have incurred losses with Equitable Life can vote on the first motion today.
	As in previous debates on Equitable Life, any Members speaking in the debate should follow the advice of the Registrar of Members' Financial Interests dating back to 2003 and declare their interests, whether or not they are formally registrable.
	In relation to voting, I can only repeat the words of Mr. Speaker Weatherill in January 1986 in relation to members of Lloyd's:
	"In matters of public policy, it has been the long-standing practice of the House-originally formulated as far back as 1811 by Mr. Speaker Abbot-that there is no obligation on an hon. Member to refrain from voting on a matter of public policy."-[ Official Report, 14 January 1986; Vol. 89, c. 1013.]
	I appreciate that that does not solve the right hon. and learned Gentleman's problem-that, without speaking in the debate, he cannot put on the record his interest when voting-but he has himself done so by raising this as a point of order.

Opposition Day
	 — 
	[19th allotted day]

Equitable Life

[Relevant Documents: The Second Report from the Public Administration Select Committee, on Justice  Delayed: The Ombudsman's report on Equitable Life, HC 41, and the Government  response, HC 953; and the Sixth Report from t he Committee, on Justice denied?  The Government's response to the Ombudsman's report on Equitable Life, HC 219,  and the Government response, HC 569 .]

Vincent Cable: I beg to move,
	That this House notes that the Parliamentary Ombudsman has taken the unusual step of using powers under the 1967 Act to present Parliament with a further and final report on Equitable Life; also notes that the Public Administration Select Committee's Sixth Report, Justice denied? The Government's response to the Ombudsman's report on Equitable Life, concluded that the Government response to the Parliamentary Ombudsman's report was inadequate as a remedy for injustice; recognises the vital role the Ombudsman plays in public life; reaffirms the duty of Parliament to support the office of the Ombudsman; believes the Government should accept the recommendations of the Ombudsman on compensating policyholders who have suffered loss; notes the outcome of the Judicial Review announced on 15 October extending the period for compensation claims back to 1991; welcomes the formation of the All-Party Group on Justice for Equitable Life Policyholders; and notes with regret its necessary formation and the fact that over 30,000 people have already died waiting for a just resolution to this saga.
	I have no interest to declare. Indeed, I am not only moving this motion for disinterested reasons, but moving it on behalf of more than my own party-although we feel strongly about it. Members in all parts of the House have taken up the cause of Equitable Life policyholders, and in fact the basis of this motion is early-day motion 1423, which has been signed by the remarkably large number of 337 Members, including 113 of the Government party. This motion should therefore have widespread all-party support, and the only amendment to it that has been tabled is a purely factual one; it notes that a judicial review has taken place, but makes no comment or judgment on the outcome.
	There is a lot of detail-legal, actuarial and other kinds-in this argument and we shall be plunged into it before long, but I want to start by setting out the broad principles that underlie the motion. From our point of view, there are two essential concerns. One of them is a human concern-a concern for human welfare and the individuals who have lost from this disaster-and the other is a constitutional concern. The human concern derives from the fact that there are roughly 1 million Equitable Life policyholders. About 400,000 policies are still managed by Equitable Life, while the other 600,000 are managed by other insurance companies. Many of those people have suffered large losses-up to half of their pension. Of those 1 million, about 30,000 have died since the original collapse of the company. Since the ombudsman reported on the subject, about 6,000 have died, and every day that passes before justice is obtained another 15 die. That summarises, in rather graphic terms, the consequences of leaving injustice unremedied.
	The constitutional issue is as follows. We have an ombudsman, and that office is not a Government quango. It is a parliamentary institution-it was set up by Parliament and it reports to Parliament on our behalf. The authority of the ombudsman is clearly at stake. Those of us who have tabled this motion have done so to ask the Government to implement the ombudsman's recommendations; that is essentially the basis of it. The Government have so far declined to do so, either in spirit or in substance.
	We need to remember just how important this issue of the authority of the ombudsman is. Many people do not attach great respect to this House-we can understand why that has been the case in recent months. The ombudsman is a parliamentary institution that is central to our constitution. It says, "Whatever you think about your MP or other MPs, there is a body you can go to that is independent of Government. If you have been wronged through maladministration in Government or a quango, this independent authority will investigate the matter without partiality and will help you to achieve justice through compensation, where necessary." If the authority of the ombudsman is defied by the Government in this major case, we will lose the credibility of a major institution of the country. That is what is at stake.

Oliver Letwin: I declare an indirect personal interest.
	Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this goes beyond the argument he is making, in that there is literally no point in having an ombudsman unless Governments make it a principle that they will obey what the ombudsman recommends?

Vincent Cable: The right hon. Gentleman is right; as this is such an important case-it is the biggest that the ombudsman has taken on-if the ombudsman's authority is simply flouted, that makes the ombudsman redundant. I might go further than him by asking the following: if the institutions of Parliament are flouted, what is the purpose of Parliament? That is a fundamental question.

Lembit �pik: Does my hon. Friend agree that the general public, including the 1,000 or so people in Montgomeryshire who lost money through Equitable Life, simply do not understand how this Government can resist what seems like an act of natural justice-following the guidance of the ombudsman? My constituents do not follow Parliament closely, but they feel that they are being treated unjustly on a matter that could be easily corrected in just the way that my hon. Friend has outlined.

Vincent Cable: Well, it can be and, indeed, it should be. Let me try to anticipate the Government's concerns. In addition to the two broad principles that I have sketched out-the human concerns and the constitutional concerns-a third issue arises: money and finance. There is common ground on the fact that that must be relevant when we are talking about large amounts of compensation, but we have crossed a bridge in the sense that the ombudsman has accepted that the public purse is a factor that must be borne in mind in compensation awards and the Government have accepted, through their ex gratia payments proposal, that there has to be compensation. The principle that there is an issue to address has been accepted on both sides. We are now united on the broad principle that finance is a factor, but that the Government agree that there must be public expenditure. We are arguing about how that mechanism will be introduced.
	Let us consider where the debate has reached in the past year. Our view, in moving this motion, is that the principles under which the ombudsman's findings must be implemented must include, as she said, an independent process, which means a tribunal-like process independent of the Government and independent of the Treasury. The Government's view is that compensation should be decided through a process led by, determined by and ultimately decided by the Government-the Treasury. That is now the fundamental distinction. In a way, that explains the heart of the constitutional problem: if the Government decide how we remedy a fault of theirs, wherein lies the independence of the ombudsman? That independence simply disappears.

David Heath: Does not the fault with the Government's position extend rather further than that? Not only have they ignored the findings of the ombudsman and refused to accept them, but they have engaged in an exercise of foot-dragging, procrastination and temporising. They have done everything possible to prevent this matter from being dealt with properly and to prevent these people from getting the justice that they deserve. Is that not the indictment against the Government in this case?

Vincent Cable: Indeed, and I now propose to take my hon. Friend through this nine-year journey, the end of which we hope we are finally approaching. Let me turn to one aspect of this tension between the two approaches to resolving the compensation-the Government-led versus the tribunal-led. I note that the Government amendment contains the remarkable phrase that their scheme
	is administratively quicker and simpler to deliver.
	The idea that after 10 years the Government are invoking speed as the basis for their case would have Sir Humphrey gasping with admiration at the Treasury's abilities in this matter.

Steve Webb: Just before my hon. Friend starts his nine-year journey, may I ask whether he also accepts that there is a second difference between our position and that of the Government? This is not simply about how much cash the Government are going to give as opposed to how much we think they should give, because the Government, by partially rejecting the ombudsman's finding, have excluded some categories of loss and some categories of policyholder altogether. Therefore, even if they suddenly decided to become more generous in cash terms, they would already have excluded a set of people whom the ombudsman rightly thinks, as do we, have suffered injustice.

Vincent Cable: My colleague is right. Of course, following the judicial review, some of those categories are now included; I understood the statement that the Minister made yesterday to say that the Government have accepted that specific change. So, there is wider coverage than there was before, but we remain with the fundamental division.

Greg Mulholland: My hon. Friend has discussed the cost of compensation, but does he agree that it is high time that the Government told this House and the taxpayer how much has been spent on evading justice over the past 10 years? It is time for the Minister to tell this House that figure today, which I suspect is very large.

Vincent Cable: I had not thought of that angle, but it is a good one. I am sure that if we were to add together the legal fees and the opportunity cost of Treasury officials' time, we would be talking about many millions.

Andrew Murrison: Does the hon. Gentleman accept the principle that justice can be means-tested? It seems that the tribunal will have to grapple with that. If that principle is accepted, what on earth will the Government say to those who do not make the cut?

Vincent Cable: Well, indeed; I believe that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the concept of disproportional effects, which the Government have introduced. None of us fully understands what it means. I do not think that the arbitrator whom the Government have appointed understands what it means either because, as far as we can tell, in his initial report he has not tried to engage with that extremely difficult issue, which many of us thought was introduced simply to evade the issue of compensation.

Brian Binley: Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the many constituents of mine who are horrified that this Government have denied them justice by refusing to set a timetable for payment and, specifically, by not defining what disproportionality of suffering actually means? Does he further agree that the Minister should set people's minds at rest on those two issues today? If he does not do so, would we be right to say that the Government are deliberately waiting for more of these people to die?

Vincent Cable: That is a very emotive way of putting it but, in essence, the hon. Gentleman is right. That is the fact of the matter because, as I said in my introduction, every day that passes another 15 of those people die; it is a sadness that many of them will never see justice.

Patrick Hall: rose-

Vincent Cable: I am sure that hon. Members are anxious to hear me get on with the history, but I shall take one further intervention now.

Patrick Hall: It is important that, at this stage, the hon. Gentleman makes it clear what he understands the compensation to refer to. I am one of the signatories of early-day motion 1423, which refers to the compensation recommended by the ombudsman. Does he agree that the ombudsman was talking about the relative loss arising from the acknowledged maladministration and not that element of loss arising from the vagaries of the market?

Vincent Cable: Yes, that is right; it has been clear from the beginning that we are talking about relative losses. It is clear that nobody-neither the action group nor anybody else-is suggesting that wider definition.
	Let me return briefly to the beginning of these events. I do so not simply for the sake of it, but because a large number of hon. Members were not in this place when the original crisis broke. Having checked this, I believe that only one member of the Government Treasury team, the Financial Secretary, and one member of the Conservative Front-Bench team, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), were Members at that time. We have been around this for a long time and a lot of people have come into the story at different stages, so it is worth remembering where it started.
	Equitable Life collapsed, in effect, in 2000. The first debate in this House, which was introduced by the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway), was held at the end of that year. It is worth returning to that debate, because many of the arguments that we are rehearsing today were set out clearly and well on that occasion. In particular, the whole principle of compensation was discussed at that time, because it was clear to those of us who had been following events at Equitable Life that there was an issue of maladministration to address. The company had been declaring large bonuses far in excess of its profits or underlying resources for some years, such that the actuary responsible for it was subsequently fired by his professional body. The company had a guarantee of annuities that assumed a continuing high level of inflation, which was described at the time as mathematically brilliant but economically illiterate. The question was raised, even then, as to how it could possibly have been that the Government Actuary's Department and the Department of Trade and Industry, which were overseeing the matter, did not spot the problem.
	So, there was a prima facie case of maladministration. I recall asking the Minister at the time whether, if there had been maladministration, there would be compensation. I asked that question because the Prime Minister made his political reputation-a long time ago-as an Opposition spokesman arguing the case for the Barlow Clowes investors, who were compensated after maladministration. The answer I received from the Minister was that once the ombudsman had made a recommendation, we could proceed to compensation. We have been waiting ever since for that debate to be resolved.

Norman Lamb: Does my hon. Friend recall the Penrose report, which gave a clear indication of maladministration that, at the time, was entirely rejected by the Government?

Vincent Cable: Yes, and that was the second step in the process. We had several years before Penrose finally reported in 2004. Lord Penrose described the delays, even at that stage-remember, this was five years ago-as iniquitous and unfair. Indeed, he found a combination of failures of policy, which are not examples of maladministration, and of maladministration and recommended that the matter be passed to the ombudsman, which is what happened. The matter was referred to the ombudsman, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and I participated on behalf of our constituents. Let us remember that the reference to the ombudsman was made on our behalf as Members of Parliament-there were 898 separate complaints, submitted by large numbers of Members on their constituents' behalf. That is why the ombudsman became involved. It was not an official process; it was a process that we initiated on behalf of our constituents.
	The ombudsman pursued her inquiry and finished her work in February 2007. It was July 2008 before that work was formally presented to Parliament, as a result of innumerable questions posed by the Treasury under a process that is described as Maxwellisation. For those not familiar with the jargon, Maxwellisation refers, I think, to one of your predecessors, Mr. Speaker, as Member for Buckingham, although he is perhaps more famous-or infamous-for other things. That Maxwellisation cost a lot of time.
	We received the ombudsman's report in July 2008 and its key findings-it is worth summarising them briefly-contained 10 determinations of maladministration: one by the Department of Trade and Industry, four by the Government Actuary and five by the Financial Services Authority. The ombudsman recommended remedies-that is, compensation. It is worth remembering that, despite what has sometimes been implied by the Government, this was not a case of a difficult lady plucking some proposals for compensation out of the air. The recommendations rested on a solid body of reasoning that had been set out well in advance called Principles for Remedy, which explained exactly the conditions under which compensation should be awarded and the process that needs to be gone through.
	The ombudsman was engaging in a meticulous process of reasoning that led to the conclusion that if there is injustice as well as hardship, a compensation process should be initiated. She described in some detail what should happen. At the risk of boring hon. Members, it is worth reading some of the key sections of her recommendations, because that is what the subsequent two years have been about. She stated:
	My second-and central-recommendation is that the Government should establish and fund a compensation scheme, with a view to assessing the individual cases of those who have been affected by the events covered in this report and providing appropriate compensation.
	She described how that should be done and her key recommendation was that the process
	should be independent and constituted along the lines of a tribunal or adjudication panel.
	Independence of Government was central to the recommended process.
	We were then given the Government's response. We had a response in the House from the then Chief Secretary, who is now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which people responded to very well because she made what seemed to be a full apology and suggested that the Government would put in process a compensation exercise. We were taken aback by the fact that the Government then issued a written response-as opposed to an oral response to the House-in the form of Command Paper 7538, which took us in a different direction. Several key elements have caused a great many problems to this day. The process was to be run by the Treasury, rather than independently, and payments were limited to post-1999 cases. That has now been remedied, but the limited degree of compensation excluded 90 per cent. of what the ombudsman had recommended. The document introduced the concept of disproportionate effects through means-testing, which we have already discussed, and sought to apportion blame between different actors, although of course the ombudsman was solely concerned with Government maladministration. Subsequently, the Government rejected the idea of interim payments, which might have speeded up payments to suffering individuals.
	Over the past year-this brings us fairly close to where we are today-we have had a succession of responses to the Government's response. One has come from the ombudsman, and we have had two reports from the Select Committee-I notice that the Chair is here and might well contribute to the discussion. We have also had the judicial review. It is worth reflecting a little on what the ombudsman had to say about how the Government responded to her report.

Peter Bottomley: Will the hon. Gentleman refresh the House's memory on the time scale the ombudsman had in mind and on how much of that time is gone? While I am intervening, may I put it on the record that although I am an Equitable policyholder I would give any compensation, were I to get any, to some good cause?

Vincent Cable: I cannot find the exact phrase in the few seconds that I have been given, but it was very clear that the process should be expeditious and humane. That is where we are in terms of the ombudsman's approach. She also said:
	It is clear to me from the Government's response to my report and from the further evidence given to the Select Committee on behalf of the Government...that, whatever the outcome of the work to be done by Sir John Chadwick, a full remedy will not be forthcoming for the injustice resulting from the maladministration I found had occurred in the prudential regulation of Equitable Life.
	In other words, she had already concluded that the Government mechanism did not allow justice to be delivered through compensation and that the process was fundamentally wrong.

Annette Brooke: It is interesting to note that the Government use the word expeditiously in their amendment. Perhaps timeliness is now very belatedly being addressed. Does my hon. Friend agree that Sir John Chadwick's remit does not offer us the opportunity to be assured that there will be full transparency and fairness?

Vincent Cable: Indeed. Since the Government have declared themselves to be racing us in order to get there faster than the proponents of this motion, speed is no longer the issue. They have told us that they will speed up, at long last, but fairness will become the issue. The issue will be whether the Government accept Sir John Chadwick's findings when they appear. We will come to that.
	Let me finish my reference to the ombudsman's response. Following the official response, the ombudsman has been involved in a very tart correspondence with the Chief Secretary. It is worth quoting one or two of the exchanges. The Chief Secretary spoke in this House on 21 July in reply to an urgent question. In response, the ombudsman wrote a letter that has subsequently been published. She stated:
	I noted what you said in the House on 21 July, and did not recognise it as a true representation of my position. That said, this is not the first time that the Government has misrepresented my position in order to defend its own and I suspect it will not be the last.
	We should be under no illusions about what the ombudsman thinks about the way in which the Government are handling the matter.
	This is not just about the ombudsman. We have had two excellent reports from the Select Committee on Public Administration-Justice delayed and Justice denied-which are well summed up by the phrase that the Government's position was
	shabby, constitutionally dubious and procedurally improper.
	We now come to the last stage of the process, the judicial review that concluded recently. The action group for the policyholders deserves an enormous amount of credit not just for briefing Members but for keeping alive an issue that could easily have died if it had not been driven so forcefully and with such conviction. The group took the judicial review option, at their own expense, to challenge the legality of the Government's response to the ombudsman's report.
	The key point in this takes us back to the fundamentals of why we have an ombudsman. The purpose of the ombudsman was to remove the need for judicial reviews of Government decisions, or the need for people to spend large amounts of their own money challenging Government rulings in court. The review should never have been necessary, but it was sought by the action group, and it is worth reflecting on its key findings.
	The judicial review concluded that the Government's position lacked cogency, and that the Government unlawfully rejected the finding that maladministration caused injustice. It specifically instructed the Government to assess claims going back to 1990-quite a major advance in concrete terms. However, as the Chief Secretary pointed out in his statement yesterday, the review concluded that the matter had to go back to Parliament, so that the question of how the compensation process would work could be resolved.
	It is therefore up to us, as Members of Parliament, to decide how the compensation process happens. Should it happen in the way that the Government have suggested, through Sir John Chadwick's inquiry, or does it need an independent tribunal process? I am sure that the Government agree that, for practical reasons, there is no need to go back to square one. Sir John Chadwick has done a lot of work, so surely we do not want to put that in the bin and start doing something else.
	Of course we do not want to do that. The practical position is that the very useful work done by Sir John Chadwick forms the platform on which we can build a resolution to the problem. That work need not be ditched, because it can now be taken over by an independent process. It can be continued with absolute confidence that the findings that are reached will be honoured, because those findings are impartial and independent.
	In contrast, we have no confidence at all that the Government will not simply disregard a conclusion produced by Sir John Chadwick that is inconvenient to them. The evidence for that is the fact that, for the past nine years, the Government have continually dragged their feet on every action that would have brought justice for our constituents.

Mr. Speaker: I must tell the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. I call the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to move it.

Liam Byrne: I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from Life to the end of the Question and add:
	also notes the Public Administration Select Committee's Sixth Report  Justice denied? The Government's response to the Ombudsman's report on Equitable Life; recognises the vital role the Ombudsman plays in public life; reaffirms the duty of Parliament to support the office of the Ombudsman; recognises the Government's determination to introduce an ex gratia payment scheme that is administratively quicker and simpler to deliver than that envisaged by the Ombudsman; further welcomes the Government's decision announced to the House on 20 October 2009 to widen the ex gratia payment scheme to include trapped annuitants who took out policies after mid-1991; urges Sir John Chadwick to report as quickly and expeditiously as possible; and recognises the impact and significant distress that maladministration and injustice have caused in respect of Equitable Life.'.
	I start by genuinely welcoming the speech made by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), and the fact that he has triggered this debate. This is a very proper subject for today's Opposition day debate, and I want to set out a number of responses to some of the points that he made. First, however, I want to echo the apology on behalf of this and previous Governments made by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who is now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
	I have made two statements already since the House returned earlier this month, as I want to keep right hon. and hon. Members up to date with the Government's work to clear up the problems of Equitable Life's past. However, today is the first opportunity for a debate since the judgment in the judicial review brought by the Equitable Life members action group-EMAG-was handed down last week.
	I promised the House last Monday that I would reflect on the court judgment as quickly as I could. I did that, and I updated the House on the matter yesterday. I should like to elaborate on that statement this afternoon, and try to address the three points that I think are now uppermost in the minds of both Equitable Life policyholders and hon. Members-the scope of the proposed ex gratia scheme, the speed with which we can act, and the fairness of the approach that we propose.
	Before I go into that, perhaps I should first say a word about the role of the parliamentary ombudsman. In preparing for this debate, I looked back over the comments that I have made in the House on this subject. I think that I underplayed and under-celebrated the role of the ombudsman in public life. This afternoon, I want to put on record my gratitude to her for her work, and I have made sure that that is underlined in the Government amendment.
	It was only right for the Government to make sure that our response to the ombudsman's report on Equitable Life was based on a thorough examination of what she said. It is true that we did not wholly agree with her conclusions, but we did agree on many things. Indeed, in nine out of 10 of her findings we agreed wholly or in part with the charge of maladministration, and in five areas we believed that injustice followed.

Oliver Letwin: I am grateful to the Chief Secretary for giving way at this early stage, but is it the Government's view that they should decide whether they agree with a judgment handed down by a court? If the Government do not consider that appropriate, is that the right attitude to adopt when an ombudsman makes a decision or recommendation?

Liam Byrne: I think that the two things are quite different, and I shall explain why in a moment.
	As I was saying, we agreed with the charge of maladministration in nine out of the 10 findings, and thought that injustice followed in five areas. To address that injustice, we proposed that an ex gratia payment scheme should be put in place.

Jim Cunningham: How many people have received ex gratia payments? What is the difference between the Government's position, as expressed in their amendment, and the Opposition's, as expressed in their motion? A number of people in my constituency are extremely concerned about the delays in receiving compensation. I get regular letters and I have raised the matter myself, and I really want to know what the fundamental difference is, as there is a lot of hardship out there.

Liam Byrne: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful to him for that point. I shall say something in a moment about how many people I think are now within the scope of the ex gratia scheme, but I hope that he will allow me to take a short run-up to that.
	The starting point for the debate about scope is the fact that the ombudsman acknowledged-I think in her evidence to the Public Administration Committee-that the Government could have chosen not to make any payments at all. She also recognised that the Government have a responsibility to balance competing demands on the public purse, a point that was underlined by the court last week.
	That said, however, there is clearly a moral and ethical case for the Government to provide an ex gratia payment scheme from the public purse. The question then becomes, What is the rational basis for the operation of that scheme? Having considered that question carefully, we concluded that the right approach was to look at where we agreed with the ombudsman in thinking that injustice had arisen. We decided that that should be the foundation of the ex gratia scheme that we put in place.
	We lacked the information about Equitable Life policyholders needed to understand exactly who would be embraced by such a scheme. That is why we asked Sir John Chadwick for his advice on the fastest and fairest way forward. That approach was then challenged in judicial review proceedings by the Equitable Life members action group. The hearing took place in July, and the judgment was handed down last week.
	It is an important ruling. I think that it takes us one step closer to a swift resolution and the provision of support for those who are suffering. The court recognised that the Government's basis for a payment scheme was lawful, and it accepted that the Government were entitled to seek Sir John Chadwick's advice in establishing the scheme.
	We very much welcome that confirmation of the legal basis of our approach, but the hon. Member for Twickenham was right to go on to say that the court also concluded that in two areas we focused too narrowly on the question of regulatory compliance. Having considered that judgment very carefully, and because I am ambitious for a speedy resolution to the matter, we took the view that the scope of the ex gratia scheme should be widened. Therefore, we have asked Sir John Chadwick to consider injustice arising in the period from mid-1991.
	What will be of interest to many right hon. and hon. Members is that that decision ensures that a number of the policyholders who are often called trapped annuitants are now likely to fall within the scope of the ex gratia scheme. The fact that the scheme has been widened means that something like up to 1 million people could be covered.

Anne Milton: Can the Chief Secretary clarify what he means by speedily? My constituents watching the debate on television will want clarification. We have had too many of those words. They are still waiting.

Liam Byrne: I shall deal with that question immediately. Speed, as the House has urged, is now of the essence. My goal, with the benefit of Sir John's advice, is to deliver an ex gratia scheme that is administratively quicker and fairer than the approach proposed by the ombudsman, and in a way that puts less of a burden on policyholders.

Anne Milton: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. I would like a time scale. I would like a date-one month, two months, three months? Speedily is not good enough.

Liam Byrne: I shall answer the question directly, but I want to make one or two points first.

Michael Weir: Can the Chief Secretary answer me on a matter of principle? The Government have gone for an ex gratia scheme, but I do not understand why, if other people have lost out owing to maladministration, they should be excluded from compensation. The Government have, in effect, entered into a means-testing arrangement for policyholders in Equitable Life.

Liam Byrne: That is an important point, which was acknowledged both in the Bradley judgment and again in the court last week. There is no legal obligation on Government to compensate people for a regulatory failure that, in large part, was caused by a failure of regulators in the early 1990s, extending up to 1998. Also, as Lord Penrose says, the company itself was the architect of the failure. Although there is no legal obligation on the Government to provide compensation for such regulatory failure, there clearly is an ethical and a moral demand for Government to provide some kind of ex gratia payment scheme. The question then becomes what is the rational basis for that scheme. The Government's conclusion has been that the only rational basis for the scheme is where we agree that injustice was caused through maladministration.
	On the question of speed-

Anne Milton: Dates.

Liam Byrne: Dates will come in a moment. When the ombudsman reported in July 2008, she suggested that a scheme could be established within six months and that, once established, such a scheme could conduct its work over the course of a further two years-in other words, taking us to December 2010. But we concluded that the approach that was recommended could be better. Indeed, when Sir John Chadwick, who is an independent judge of some repute, looked at the question, he described the ombudsman's approach as
	at best unsatisfactory and more likely impossible.
	The reason for this is that the approach that was proposed by the ombudsman and that has been rehearsed again by the hon. Member for Twickenham and is recommended in his early-day motion entails a case-by-case review by a tribunal or another body of the evidence of loss from individual policyholders.
	If we believe, as the hon. Gentleman says, that there are up to 1 million policyholders, and if we had to consider each of their investment decisions in the period that we are talking about, we would have to review something like 30 million different investment decisions. The approach proposed by the ombudsman puts the burden on the individual policyholder to show how regulatory failure created a loss. Then the policyholder would need to show what kind of relative loss they had suffered, which would require them to say something about a counterfactual.
	What we have asked Sir John to do is to undertake a better way of securing ex gratia payments for policyholders. The approach that Sir John proposes is to look at different classes of policyholders and understand what the relative losses may be, in order to make sure that a much swifter and policy-based compensation payment can be made. That will be faster than a case-by-case review of 30 million investment decisions.

Lorely Burt: I understand what the Minister says about the amount of time and effort that needs to be put into the compensation scheme, but echoing the hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), may I ask him to confirm that the compensation scheme will be in place in the lifetime of his Government-before the general election?

Liam Byrne: I shall come to that point directly, but I shall take another intervention first.

Susan Kramer: I think the Minister is going to receive another letter from the ombudsman for again misrepresenting what she said in her report about a process that she recommended could be completed within two years as a mechanism for compensation. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the term disproportionate, as he describes it, applies simply to the different impacts on different classes of policyholders if, for example, somebody had policy type A rather than policy type B? It is not a means-testing measure, and that point is crucial.

Liam Byrne: There are two points there, as the hon. Lady said. First, on the question of relative loss, it will be important to look at what policyholders would have made if they had put their investments into a different organisation, rather than a trade-off between different policies. All parties will have to come to a view about how what will ultimately be a fixed pot of money is shared between policyholders. That is one of the questions that Sir John has to consider, and it rightly should be a matter for further debate in the House.

Mark Lazarowicz: I can see the strength of my right hon. Friend's argument for a different mechanism from that proposed by the ombudsman, but a problem is that we are still a long way from getting that mechanism set up. The difficulty is that people are rightly asking why these leisurely discussions and reports are going on. Out there, people are dying. Out there, people are not getting any money. Why have not steps been taken already to set up the mechanism so that people can be paid out now? My right hon. Friend needs to give us definite indications of dates when payments can be made or when a mechanism can be set up if he is to persuade many of us to support him in the Lobby later today.

Liam Byrne: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. It allows me to say that work is well in hand. Sir John has already set out his approach and he is already a long way through the work. It is worth the House reflecting on the scale of the task that Sir John is working through. He has to consider information on 2 million policies and information dating back to around 1990 on payments and investments for over 20 main types of policy. That demands a review of several hundred specific policy products. It requires that data be checked by both his actuaries and those of Equitable Life.
	Sir John then has to give advice on how to assess the relative losses of the varied classes of policyholder. The only way to do this is to assess the performance of the rest of the industry at the time, a process that will demand some pretty difficult actuarial calculations and the testing of a number of assumptions, not least how to make payments most easily and what their tax treatment should be. We have asked Sir John to finalise the design of his scheme by spring 2010.

Vincent Cable: We all understand that the Minister has a perfectly legitimate role in protecting the Treasury, but his argument seems to be that the Government's route is designed to protect the policyholders by getting them resolution more quickly than the ombudsman would. Why, then, does he think the policyholders have invested a substantial amount of money in order to pursue a legal action to follow the ombudsman route, rather than the one that he is recommending?

Liam Byrne: I cannot second-guess what was in the minds of EMAG, but I think there were two concerns in particular, both of which it was legitimate to test. The first was the legal basis for the Government's approach, which the court was happy to confirm. The second, rightly, was for policyholders to test the scope of the ex gratia scheme.

Patrick Hall: The ombudsman used the expression relative loss, which has been used before in the debate. My right hon. Friend has also referred to that, but the Government's favoured position is based not on relative loss, but on disproportionate loss. I have not seen a definition of that. Could he cast some light on the distinction between relative loss and disproportionate loss?

Liam Byrne: That is one of the questions on which we have asked Sir John Chadwick to advise. When the next stage of the report is finished, which I hope will be in the next week or two, that may be something that I could lay before the House so that we could test some of the conclusions in debate.

Tony Wright: rose-

Anne Main: rose-

Liam Byrne: I shall give way to my hon. Friend and then to the hon. Lady.

Tony Wright: So that the House is not misled, may I put it to my right hon. Friend that the issue is not the technical efficiency of different schemes for delivering redress, but a fundamental difference in approach between the ombudsman, who says that redress should be as of right because of regulatory failure, and the Government, who say that they shall create an ex gratia remedy for those who have suffered disproportionate loss? That is a fundamentally different approach.

Liam Byrne: It is, and my hon. Friend might want to intervene again. However, the Bradley judgment and last week's court judgment confirmed the legal basis of the Government's ex gratia proposal, and that brings us to the point that there is no legal obligation on the Government to provide compensation for regulatory failure. The ombudsman appeared before my hon. Friend's Committee, and it may have been him who asked her directly whether she would have been content for the Government to accept all the recommendations and then provide no compensation whatever. I think that it was question 29 of the relevant report, and her answer was yes: she would have been, perhaps not satisfied, but content that it would have been perfectly legitimate for the Government to provide no compensation whatever. However, even though there is no legal obligation to provide compensation, all parts of the House agree that there is a legal and moral demand for the provision of some compensation. The question then becomes, what is the rational basis on which to put in place that scheme?

Mark Lazarowicz: rose-

Liam Byrne: I shall give way to the hon. Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) and then to my hon. Friend.

Anne Main: The Chief Secretary is doing a wonderful job of dancing on the head of a pin. I met Equitable Life victims yesterday, and the reason they have gone down their particular route is that they do not trust the Government. If we do not sort out the matter now, we will live with that fundamental break in trust-in terms of being encouraged to invest-as a very poor legacy of this situation. Therefore, may I ask the Chief Secretary yet again to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton) on the question of dates? Spring is not good enough.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That was a notably lengthy intervention, but I feel that the reply from the Minister will be characteristically pithy.

Liam Byrne: Spring is my target date for providing the House with the design of the ex gratia scheme.

Mark Hunter: rose-

Mark Lazarowicz: rose-

Liam Byrne: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter).

Mark Hunter: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he has been generous in doing so. All who are concerned on behalf of their constituents about the issue will not be surprised at what I suspect will be the fury of the many thousands of people who will have looked in on this debate and, frankly, expected and hoped-despite all the odds-for a little better from the Government. Has the Minister calculated how many fewer people-because people with legitimate claims are dying-he will have to pay by his target date of spring next year?

Liam Byrne: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will want to intervene again if I pose this question. How much faster does he think that compensation would flow to policyholders if an independent process were set up that then reviewed the investment decisions-all 30 million-of 2 million people? Will he intervene again and tell me how much faster he thinks that compensation scheme would be up and running?

Mark Hunter: I am happy to, because the point was made before: the question is not about having to review 30 million individual cases, but about reviewing policyholders' different levels of policy. With respect, the Minister is making a fatuous claim.

Liam Byrne: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman says that a better approach is to review different classes of policyholder, because that is exactly the approach that Sir John Chadwick recommends. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will answer the following question by intervening again. What is at stake is a test of approach, and the hon. Member for Twickenham prayed in aid the ombudsman's report, citing paragraph 9.27, which says:
	My second-and central-recommendation is that the Government should establish and fund a compensation scheme with a view to assessing the individual cases of those who have been affected by the events covered in this report and providing appropriate compensation.
	Is the hon. Member for Cheadle prepared to intervene again and say that that is the wrong approach and that we should consider providing compensation for different classes of policyholder, which is of course Sir John Chadwick's approach?

Mark Hunter: rose-

John Pugh: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I should say that the Minister has not answered the question from our hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable). The Minister offers what he calls a swifter and better way, but, if it is, why has he not convinced one single policyholder-they are not stupid-that that is the case?

Liam Byrne: All I can do is point to the ombudsman's recommendation for, and assessment of, when her proposed compensation scheme would be up and running and have concluded its business. That best-case assumption was December 2010. When we and, indeed, Sir John Chadwick looked at what running that scheme would entail, we found that it was a pretty conservative estimate of how long it would take to get through the business. I think that Sir John's approach is right and offers a swifter route to justice.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Liam Byrne: I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz).

Mark Lazarowicz: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way again. I, unlike many colleagues, was convinced of the correctness of the Government's ex gratia scheme approach, rather than of an approach that seemed to be a lengthy way of resolving the issue. However, I am concerned about the time scale-and even more now. We are told that the proposals for the scheme will be in place by 2010. Allowing for the natural delay to such schemes, anyway, we are probably talking about proposals coming forward next summer and there will be months of debate after that. By the time any money starts being paid out, we will probably be well into 2011, or beyond. That is unacceptable, so may I ask the Chief Secretary to-

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's intervention has been quite lengthy.

Liam Byrne: As I say, my goal is to ensure that a scheme is up and running within a timetable that is administratively quicker than the ombudsman's proposed approach, and I know that the House will hold me to account for delivering that proposal.

Rob Marris: I do not share this love-in with the ombudsman, who took a slothful more than four years to produce her report. Nor do I share any love-in in terms of the time that the Government have taken. My right hon. Friend says today that a design for the scheme will be finalised by spring 2010, and that seems to be much better than the ombudsman's proposal to review 30 million decisions. However, spring is an elastic date. By what dates does my right hon. Friend think that pay-outs will start?

Liam Byrne: That, I know, is the million dollar question, which I cannot answer this afternoon.  [ Interruption. ] I know. Until Sir John has finished looking at the principles of how we calculate relative loss and assess disproportionate impact, both of which we will want to debate in the House, I cannot answer that question. I can commit to a date for the next stage-the scheme's design.

Mark Hoban: The Chief Secretary is in danger of treating the House and our constituents like fools. He tried to dance around the issue of when payments will be made, and he said that Sir John Chadwick would design a scheme by spring 2010. Surely the Treasury has looked at how long it will take to implement a scheme. Treasury officials tell us that it has been working in parallel on those issues since Sir John's appointment. When will payments be made to policyholders who have lost out? The Minister must have an indication of the timetable for delivery.

Liam Byrne: As I have said, the regulatory failures of the 1990s, which we are now attempting to clear up, unfortunately entail Sir John having to go back over 2 million policies and information going back to 1990, to review several hundred different products and to assess the relative losses that people may have suffered. That will entail, quite obviously, an assessment of the money that people could have made by putting their cash into alternative products. If a fair system is what we want, a fair system will require a thorough examination of the records. The hon. Gentleman will share my ambition and determination, given his party's responsibility for and involvement in some of the regulatory failures of the past, to ensure that the ex gratia scheme is fair to policyholders. He will not want any short-circuiting during the review; he will want us to ensure that all the records are checked.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Liam Byrne: I shall give way to the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Campbell).

Gregory Campbell: Can the Chief Secretary not assure the House and Equitable Life policyholders that, at the close of today's debate, they will receive what they have not received to date-clarity and certainty about the dates when payments will be made?

Liam Byrne: I can only repeat the answer that I gave a moment ago.

Sammy Wilson: The Chief Secretary has outlined the work that still has to be done, all of which I assume will be in the framework that he intends to have published by spring next year. What further steps must be taken after next spring that cause the uncertainty that he has expressed as to when payments will start?

Liam Byrne: My assessment is that payments can begin moving quite quickly once the final design of the scheme is understood and provision is made from the public purse.

John Redwood: Is not the bottom line, then, that whenever the next general election is held the Government will go into it having to say to Equitable Life policyholders, We have not agreed any compensation for you?

Liam Byrne: I hope that we will not be in that position.

Crispin Blunt: I want to record my interest as a former Equitable Life policyholder in relation to my pension as a special adviser.
	The Chief Secretary is treating all the policyholders with the most enormous contempt if he says that he will not put the responsibility on to them to assess the compensation for claims that they may put in. To say that he is going to set up a system that will assess 2 million possible investment decisions in order to come forward with proposals puts the thing precisely the wrong way round. The one way to get policyholders in a position to make claims is to reverse the burden and put the burden on policyholders to come forward with their claims against a set of criteria that the Government and this House set.

Liam Byrne: I did not quite follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. I said that requiring individual policyholders to come forward and provide an explanation to a tribunal about how they relied on regulatory decisions that turned out to be erroneous, and then show how losses were entailed, would place an undue burden on them. That is why the proposal from Sir John Chadwick is quite different-it is to look at different classes of policyholders to understand what their relative losses are and to propose an ex gratia payment scheme on that basis.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Liam Byrne: I will give way one last time before I make some progress.

Brian Binley: On 15 January, the Chief Secretary stated that policyholders would be paid. Why have not the Government done any contingency work at all on this matter? Why did they not start the process much earlier? Will he cut to the chase and tell us what disproportionality of suffering really means? People out there are bewildered and horrified by the Government's approach.

Liam Byrne: In essence, relative loss is about losses that are suffered by policyholders once one has stripped out factors such as market movements, and disproportionate impact is about the effect of those losses on policyholders. As I said in an earlier answer, those are questions on which we have asked Sir John's advice, and I will bring those conclusions back to the House at a later stage.

Sandra Gidley: rose-

Liam Byrne: I will give way one last time and then conclude my remarks.

Sandra Gidley: I appreciate the complexity of the situation, but could the Chief Secretary confirm that Sir John Chadwick has had the resources that he needs to deal with it properly? Given that we get the impression that this problem is yet again being kicked into the long grass, could it be dealt with more quickly with more resources? Is Sir John dealing with it full time or part time?

Liam Byrne: I asked Sir John before the summer whether he has sufficient resources to undertake the work that we have asked him to undertake, and he assured me that he had-but as I have explained, there is a considerable task for him to sieve through.
	This has been a difficult legacy from the past that the Government have had to clear up. For me, the three principles are to deliver a payment scheme that meets the moral imperative to act; to deliver an ex gratia payment scheme in a way that is administratively simpler and faster than the way that the ombudsman suggested; and, perhaps most importantly of all, to ensure that the right people are included in the scheme. That is the approach reflected in the Government's amendment, and I urge my colleagues to give it their support.

Mark Hoban: Conservative Members welcome this debate and will support the motion in the Division Lobby later this afternoon. The motion has cross-party support, and early-day motion 1423, which is at its core, has support from Members in all parts of the House.
	The strength of cross-party support is a testament to the work of the Equitable members action group and to the number of constituents whose lives have been badly affected by the problems of Equitable Life. Each of us will have had letters and e-mails over the course of the past couple of days asking us to support the motion, but throughout this whole period policyholders have maintained pressure on MPs to ensure that justice is done. Many Members will have received harrowing letters from constituents whose lives have been blighted by the crisis at Equitable Life. It is easy to get lost in the detail of the ombudsman's report, the Penrose report, the Baird report and the report produced by the European Parliament, but at the end of the day real lives have been affected by the problems at Equitable Life. The problems that arose back in the 1990s and at the turn of this decade continue to affect people's lives today as they wait for justice.
	In their response to the ombudsman's report, the Government said, at paragraph 80:
	Regulation is never an easy job and mistakes, even serious ones, will occasionally be made, but the real test for government is how it then responds.
	So how have the Government responded? How have they passed the test? The reality, as policyholders see it, is that at each step of the way the Government frustrated the fight for justice for Equitable Life's policyholders. We need only look at the fight that we had to allow the ombudsman a second investigation into Equitable Life. First, the Government claimed that it was outside her remit-an argument that was disproved by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie); then the report was delayed because the Government suddenly found new documents; then the Government bombarded the ombudsman with further comments, through the Maxwellisation process, as she sought to finalise the report. Then, although the report was published in July last year, the Government gave its formal response only in January, rejecting some of her findings of maladministration and injustice, and thereby triggering the court case in which there was a judgment earlier this month. I am pleased to say that the Government have accepted the findings of that case, as many people were concerned that they would appeal and delay the process still further. It is particularly welcome that those judgments include bringing trapped annuitants into the scope of the scheme.
	At every step of the way, we have seen delay. Each delay has put off the day when eventually policyholders would receive compensation for the failings of the regulator-failings that were evident from the Penrose report published five years ago. Each delay has meant that policyholders have had to get by on much reduced pensions; instead of enjoying their retirement they have struggled and had to fight for justice. Each delay has also meant that, sadly, some people will never see justice, as policyholders die. The Government should be ashamed of having tried to block attempts to give justice to people who have been so badly let down over a decade by regulatory failure.
	Conservative Members have been clear throughout this process. We have said that if the ombudsman found that there was maladministration owing to regulatory failure and that compensation was required, we would accept those findings. That was our position while we campaigned for the ombudsman to be allowed a second investigation, that was our position when the ombudsman published her report last year, and that is our position today.

Oliver Letwin: Does my hon. Friend agree that it was a signal moment when the Chief Secretary announced, on behalf of the Government, a constitutional doctrine whereby it was not necessary for the Government even to accept the findings of the ombudsman, leaving aside the question of compensation, and drew a distinction between that and a court judgment without ever explaining it?

Mark Hoban: My right hon. Friend echoes an important point that was touched on by the ombudsman and raised in the Public Administration Committee report. There is almost a sense that the Government are using the ombudsman's status as an investigator rather than a judicial authority to wheedle their way out of taking responsibility for these things.
	I want to return to a point that the Chief Secretary made on a couple of occasions when he said that there is a principle whereby the Government do not compensate for regulatory failure. If that were the case, the public bodies being investigated by the ombudsman would have been excluded by the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967, but they were not so excluded. That has led to the current position in which the ombudsman has the power to recommend that compensation should be given in cases of maladministration. Under the existing regulatory system, the Financial Services Authority is excluded from the ombudsman's remit. However, the approach that the Government have developed to the ombudsman's findings in this case was not raised in 2004, when the ombudsman sought a second investigation into Equitable Life, but emerged rather late in the day when the Government were trying to find a way to confound the ombudsman and confound policyholders' fight for justice.

John Redwood: As the Minister who promptly paid compensation, with the permission of the House, after the regulatory failure in the Barlow Clowes case was found to be maladministration, may I ask my hon. Friend to confirm that a future Conservative Government would be prompt in making some compensation available to Equitable Life victims?

Mark Hoban: My right hon. Friend speaks from his experience of Barlow Clowes. The Prime Minister has tried to avoid paying compensation to people who suffered loss through the maladministration of Equitable Life. He is trying to block the process and has fought every step of the way to prevent that from happening. I am happy to say that we want to ensure that policyholders receive the justice that they deserve. The Chief Secretary was careful in his language and phraseology about quite what would happen in spring 2010, so it seems that whoever wins the next general election will have to deal with the problem, and clear up the mess that this Government have left, in order to provide justice for Equitable's policyholders.

Julie Kirkbride: I suspect that my hon. Friend's constituents, like mine, have been e-mailing him to say that they will be listening to the debate and watching how we vote. Tomorrow, as a result of what the Chief Secretary and others have said, I shall write to all the policyholders of whom I am aware. Does my hon. Friend have any advice or observations that I might put in those letters about how people who have suffered incredible financial loss might take their case forward from here?

Mark Hoban: I have some clear advice that my hon. Friend might wish to give her constituents. History has shown that this Government have consistently sought to block compensation for policyholders who have lost as a consequence of maladministration, whereas the Conservative party has argued in favour of compensation for policyholders when there has been evidence of maladministration. There is a clear distinction to be drawn-a clear choice to be made, to use the phraseology that the Prime Minister is keen on-between the approaches of this party and the Members on the Treasury Bench. I hope that my comments are sufficiently clear for my hon. Friend to include them in her letter to her constituents tomorrow.

Sammy Wilson: Will the hon. Gentleman outline how he would approach the issue of compensation should there be a change of Administration following the next election? Would he be happy to go down the route recommended by the ombudsman, or would he be looking for a tailor-made scheme drawn up by his party?

Mark Hoban: We accept the ombudsman's recommendation that payments should be made to policyholders who lost out. She was right to make her points about relative loss and the impact of compensation payments on the public purse, and I do not believe that anybody in the House disagrees about how that is to work. However, we need to consider the matter of the tribunal. Strong arguments have been made about how it should work and why there needs to be independent review, but I am conscious that policyholders have waited a long time for justice, because the Government have sought to frustrate and block the process. It is all very well for the Chief Secretary to be reasonable now, but some of his predecessors have been less than reasonable. I want to see justice given to policyholders speedily and fairly. They have waited long enough, and we should implement the scheme as quickly and fairly as possible.
	We have been clear in our support for the ombudsman's recommendations. That is our position today and would be our position if elected at the next general election. We have also accepted the ombudsman's finding that there was a decade of regulatory failure. The Chief Secretary talked about cleaning up the mess that had been left, but he should acknowledge that some of the regulatory failures that the ombudsman identified happened on the current Government's watch. If he has cleaned up anybody's mess, it is the mess that has arisen as a consequence of the delays in dealing with the problem.
	We agree with the ombudsman that policyholders should receive payments for relative loss and that the impact on public finances should be taken into account. We now need to understand how quickly the Government can move. Since January, when they accepted some of the ombudsman's findings-they have now been forced by the courts to accept others-the Treasury has failed to set a timetable for the resolution of the problem. That failure, coupled with the Government's tactics to date, create the strong impression that the Treasury wants to kick the matter into the long grass and put it off for another few months. That is not fair to policyholders, who want some certainty about when they might see a payment.
	We have made some progress with the Government, and the Chief Secretary has announced that he expects Sir John to put forward a design for a payments scheme in spring 2010. What is less clear is when policyholders would receive their first payments under such a scheme. He said that the ombudsman's proposals might not mean payment before December 2010, but do the Government believe that payments will be made before that point under their scheme? Policyholders need further clarity, and I am surprised that the Government have not produced an indicative timetable of what may happen once Sir John puts forward his scheme. Perhaps when the Exchequer Secretary winds up the debate, she will put some flesh on the bones of what the timetable beyond spring 2010 should be. The Public Administration Committee called for an indicative timetable in its report, and it is disappointing that the Government have failed to establish one.

Anne Main: Will my hon. Friend touch on the Chief Secretary's words today that seemed yet again to indicate that means-testing is on the agenda, and on whether the Government are giving any steer on how the means-testing assessment will work? We have no idea what criteria the Government are thinking of using.

Mark Hoban: What the Government mean by disproportionate is one of the matters that they are yet to address. The Chief Secretary's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), was pressed on that when she made a statement in January. No further progress has been made on elaborating on what that means, which creates uncertainty in the minds of policyholders and a sense of doubt about the outcome. We need the Government to clarify their thinking about what disproportionate means in practice.

Robert Syms: A lot of Equitable Life policyholders are in great financial difficulty and quite frail. Is there a possibility of interim payments to assist them, or are they going to have to wait until the very end, when everything is done and dusted with the compensation scheme?

Mark Hoban: My hon. Friend raises an important point. Some people affected are suffering real hardship, which has been prolonged by the delay in introducing the scheme. Once the Government have decided upon a scheme, having received Sir John Chadwick's recommendations next spring, I hope they will consider that seriously. There is a real risk that the suffering and hardship will continue without any clear end in sight.

Anne Milton: Does my hon. Friend agree that this is actually all very simple? A lot of hon. Members will make speeches today, but what my constituents want to know is what they are going to get, when, and what the calculation is based on.

Mark Hoban: My hon. Friend is absolutely right: that is what our constituents want to know, and it is the essence of this debate and of the letters that we receive. I understand that Sir John Chadwick needs to work through what the scheme might look like, but when policyholders will get money is a really important question to answer. I thought that the Chief Secretary was going to get there today: he had a little dance around it, and teased us with, I will come to that directly. I hoped that we might actually get a date, but all that we got was spring 2010.
	We have had such statements before from the Government. We were promised a response to the ombudsman's report before Christmas, but it did not appear until the start of this year. The whole process has been characterised by delay after delay by the Government, and some certainty is required for our constituents who have lost out.

Daniel Rogerson: The hon. Gentleman is rightly focusing on the time scale involved, and other hon. Members have probed a little on that. However, I want to be clear about what he is saying about his party's position on this crucial issue. Has he decided that it is out of the question to go for what EMAG has been campaigning for, which is a completely independent tribunal? Is he setting aside any ambition for that and saying that any influence that his party might have in future will not be brought to bear on securing that?

Mark Hoban: All I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that we want to see policyholders compensated quickly and fairly. We all need to bear that in mind when thinking about how the process might develop. By next spring, so much work might have been done by Sir John Chadwick that setting up a tribunal could delay justice still longer. We need to be really careful and to think this through to ensure that we get the right outcome for policyholders, who are waiting anxiously for some resolution of the issue. Sadly, as every day goes by, more policyholders die. I wonder whether they would thank us for further delaying the process.
	Let me raise a couple of broader issues that we need to address. As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said in an intervention, the whole episode has brought into question the way in which the Government approach the ombudsman's work. At times, it has appeared that the ombudsman is an inconvenience and an irritant, whose work should be treated as a distraction. We must remember that the ombudsman is an Officer of the House, and the way in which the Government have dealt with her undermines an office of the House and is disrespectful to it. The fact that the ombudsman has had to issue a further report on Equitable Life is a sign of how frustrated she has been on the matter.
	In evidence to the Public Administration Committee, the ombudsman said that
	the Government's response was 'strong on assertion, short on facts', and that it 'fails to address the basis on which [she] came to several of [her] findings'. As she put it...Perhaps another way of saying that is the response says that I said something different to what I actually said and then says it disagrees with something I did not say.
	I do not think that that is a very good position for an Officer of the House to find herself in. The Committee reported:
	The fact that the Ombudsman feels that she has been misunderstood and misrepresented is an indictment of the quality of the Government's arguments as presented to the public.
	We should acknowledge that the Chief Secretary has sought to redress that by recognising that the ombudsman's work has been undermined and that it should be celebrated more, but of course, what he needs to remember is that as MPs, we rely on the ombudsman to investigate claims of maladministration. To treat the ombudsman in such a way is to undermine the office and erode our constituents' confidence in the mechanisms that Parliament has set up to protect and help them.
	I mentioned regulation and compensation in an intervention. The handling of Equitable Life, from start to finish, has undermined people's confidence in the regulatory system. The way in which the Government have sought to block the ombudsman's investigation into Equitable Life undermines confidence in the regulatory system. People want to know that the mechanism that is in place to protect them works and is respected, but the fact that the Government have sought to frustrate the ombudsman's inquiry undermines people's confidence that that mechanism is working. Therefore, we need to think very carefully about the relationship between Parliament and the ombudsman and what lessons we should learn from the process.

Oliver Heald: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the biggest challenges facing this country is persuading people to save for their future, particularly in the form of pensions? Half the population do not do so at the moment, so a saga such as this, in which people have no confidence in the pensions that they have bought, is an absolute policy disaster. The matter needed addressing a long time ago, and it is time the Government got on with it.

Mark Hoban: My hon. Friend is right: the episode has undermined people's confidence. They need to have confidence in the pensions system if they are to save for their retirement, and also confidence in the regulation. People will not look beyond the headlines and will not be looking at the fine detail of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967, which set up the office of ombudsman; they will just get the sense that the system that has been set up to protect them has not worked.
	We need to ensure that our constituents understand that the actions that have been taken and the processes that have been put in place to protect them are now effective and working. Once we get people to trust those processes, perhaps we will see an increase in saving for retirement.
	In conclusion, because I am conscious that other Members of the House want to take part in the debate-

Bob Spink: Before the hon. Gentleman concludes, will he give way?

Mark Hoban: No. I have been generous in taking interventions and have gone on for rather longer than I had hoped, and I am coming to the conclusion of my speech.
	I ask those from across the House who signed early-day motion 1423 to vote in favour of the motion. That would be a clear sign to the policyholders that we are united in support of their campaign for justice, and a sign to the Treasury that the House wants speedy action to resolve the problem as soon as possible, and will not tolerate any more delays, obstruction or prevarication. It is not a partisan issue; it is about justice for policyholders, who put their faith in a regulatory system that has let them down. It is time for Members on both sides of the House to say to the Government that enough is enough, and that justice must be done.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind all hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 15-minute limit on contributions from Back Benchers.

Tony Wright: I shall speak for much less than 15 minutes; indeed, I had not anticipated speaking at all, but I rise simply to say that I regard the matter-this will not go down well in the Whips' quarters-as a House matter.
	When our ombudsman-the parliamentary ombudsman-makes a report to the House and says that injustice resulting from maladministration has not been remedied, and when she is then moved to make a special report to the House, which has happened on only four previous occasions in the history of the office of ombudsman since 1967, she is entitled to ask the House to take a view. All she can do is report to the House and ask it to take a view on whether her reading of matters or the Government's is to be preferred.
	It is extremely unfortunate that we do not have a mechanism that gives the House collectively-I would hope on a free vote, because it is a House matter-the ability to determine the issue. We have not had a chance to do that. It is in some ways unfortunate, but perhaps necessary, that the only mechanism that has been found is an Opposition party motion on an Opposition day. From the point of view of the House and the ombudsman, it would be much better if there was a mechanism by which we could test the House's opinion, in a genuinely independent way, on whether it wanted to accept what an ombudsman had said in such special circumstances.
	In the conclusion of her latest and special report to the House, the ombudsman states:
	In this case, I am satisfied that the injustice I found in my report to have resulted from maladministration on the part of the public bodies responsible for the prudential regulation of the Society has not so far been remedied. I am also satisfied, for the reasons I have given above, that it will not be so remedied whatever the outcome of the work yet to be done by Sir John Chadwick...I consider that it is appropriate to draw this to Parliament's attention, given the scale of the injustice I have found and the nature of the Government's response-which means that this injustice will not appropriately be remedied.

Oliver Heald: May I say how much I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there should be a procedure to bring an ombudsman's recommendation in a special report before the House automatically? If he would like to refer the matter to the Procedure Committee, I would be happy to support him, and if he wants to table an early-day motion, I would be happy to put my name to it, because it is important that the ombudsman is respected, and there should be a proper procedure for the House to consider such a matter.

Tony Wright: That is a very fine offer and I shall certainly take it up.
	I am quite realistic about this. Such things test every Government. It is quite proper for a Government to say, If we were to provide a remedy of the kind that the ombudsman suggests in this case, or indeed in any other case, there would be a cost. In this case, the cost is substantial-there can be no equivocation about that. The figures look slightly less daunting than they did a couple of years ago; we now know how to use these big numbers.
	It is in the public interest for the Government to point to the sizeable public expenditure implications of the recommendations, but there is a larger public interest in maintaining the integrity of the ombudsman system. If we start to chip away at that and say, Oh well, we'll accept some of her findings, but reject others, we chip away at the ombudsman system. This House decided to set up a system of independent investigation of the actions of public bodies, including Departments, and having adopted such a system we cannot-except in the most exceptional circumstances-say, Well, actually, we do not like the findings, leaving aside the question of any remedy.

Liam Byrne: I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says, but if a parliamentary ombudsman finds an injustice and proposes a remedy that is, let us say for the sake of argument, wrong, and the Government propose a different remedy, that automatically breaks the link between the injustice identified and the remedy on offer. What is the right way to approach that question, when a legitimate debate may be had about the range of remedies that may address the injustice that the ombudsman has rightly identified? I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that it would always be unsafe, in any area of public life, to receive arguments and proposals as if they were written on tablets of stone. No matter who produces those conclusions, there must always be a way of testing them in case the remedies proposed are incorrect.

Tony Wright: We are getting into interesting territory, and I am not sure how much further the House wishes to go, even though it is important territory. When the ombudsman was established 42 years ago, it was not said in the legislation that the ombudsman's findings would be binding. It was said that after recommendations were made, a response would be made. The assumption has always been that those recommendations would carry an authority with them and be routinely accepted. On the whole, that process has worked over the years.
	We get into difficulties if Governments start saying that they want to depart from that convention, to pick and choose between findings and to vary the remedies recommended by the ombudsman.

Oliver Heald: The hon. Gentleman will know that for many weeks the shadow Leader of the House has asked for a debate on the special report from the ombudsman. That is the answer to the Minister's question: if the Government want to do something that differs from the recommendations, they should table a motion to be debated and voted on by the House.

Tony Wright: The hon. Gentleman is right. It is also right that we should have this discussion. Having made a decision, the Government should put their case in the best way that they can, and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is doing that. He made some important points about the mechanics of delivering redress systems, but the fundamental points are still at issue. Only the House can come to a view on those.
	The ombudsman has settled views on how redress should follow from findings of maladministration leading to injustice. Redress is part of the system. We are not compensating for the mismanagement of the Equitable Life company, or for what happened to the markets that made life more difficult than it would have been otherwise for policyholders, but we are compensating for that element of serial regulatory failure that contributed to what happened to those policyholders. It was only late in the day during the ombudsman's inquiries that the Government suddenly announced the doctrine that they would not compensate for regulatory failure. The ombudsman rightly said to that, Well, I wish that the Government had said that at the beginning of my inquiry. When she was carrying out her inquiry, those bodies were not immune from ombudsman investigation or from paying compensation for regulatory failure.
	The principle that the ombudsman advances is the same as the principle she advances in every other case that she investigates. When she finds maladministration by a public body, the people affected should be put back into the position that they would have been in had the maladministration not occurred. She has applied exactly the same principle in this case as in every other case that she investigates. The question for the House-I keep saying for the House because it is for the House to decide and not the Government-is whether it wants to adhere to that principle or not. If it does, it will have to go with the ombudsman's principle of redress in this case, which would mean that all those who have suffered loss as a result of maladministration must have some remedy. When the Government say, on seeing the big numbers, We will only, for the sake of charity, compensate those who have suffered disproportionately, the ombudsman rightly says that that is not consistent with the principles of her office.
	The fundamental point is that we have to decide, not as party people-that is how we do everything else in this place and it often demeans us-but as House people, whether we want to assert the integrity of the office of the parliamentary ombudsman, which this House established more than 40 years ago, or want to see it progressively undermined. That is the fundamental issue and that is why I shall support the motion, although as I said earlier, I wish that we were having a free vote on the ombudsman's report itself.

Susan Kramer: I shall also try to be brief, because the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) said so much of what I wish to say, but said it a great deal better than I could ever have said it.
	I first wish to congratulate EMAG. I am incredibly conscious of the many members of the action group and their appointed leadership who took the difficult decision to put themselves at risk and raise the resources to proceed with a judicial review. They have been utterly vindicated by the court, which accepted most of the principles that they brought before it, and changed the likely outcome for the many policyholders who lost money in Equitable Life because of regulatory maladministration. Those people deserve credit from this House.
	I also join in the sentiment that the judicial review has been a marked success for Parliament and the parliamentary ombudsman. When the ombudsman produced her report, I was incredibly impressed, like many others, by the degree of detail, care and objectivity that were so evidently present in the analysis of the circumstances and the carefully drawn conclusions that she reached. I am shocked, therefore, by the Treasury response, which in many ways was arrogant, superficial and dismissive, and not the kind of response deserved by the work, thought and care that went into the ombudsman's initial report. In a sense, the response was a comment on the Treasury's view of the ombudsman system.

Theresa Villiers: I cannot think of another instance in which we have seen the Government respond to an ombudsman's report in a remotely similar way. It seems that this is unprecedented. Does the hon. Lady agree?

Susan Kramer: I very much agree with the hon. Lady's comments. I also say to the Exchequer Secretary that we saw today a repeat of some of that attitude when the ombudsman's timetable for delivering compensation to injured Equitable Life policyholders was questioned.

Bob Spink: Does the hon. Lady agree that it would show greater respect to policyholders were the Labour or the Conservative party-whichever wins the general election next year-to undertake to make interim payments or payments in full to policyholders before the end of next year? That is a substantive issue.

Susan Kramer: I can only agree with the hon. Gentleman. On the ombudsman's timetable, the Government's response to the ombudsman's recommendations, published in January 2009, states:
	The Ombudsman has said that the scheme-
	the compensation scheme-
	should be established within six months of any decision being taken to set it up-
	the ombudsman would have assumed that that meant summer 2008-
	and that its work should be completed-
	completed means all payments made-
	within two years of its being established.
	We would have been almost through the entire process had the ombudsman's ideas and structure, which came out of the detail of four years' work-they were not off the cuff or the back of an envelope-been accepted. Today, once again, the Government and Treasury have suggested something very different from the ombudsman's position.

Jo Swinson: I totally agree with what my hon. Friend says about the detailed work done by the ombudsman. We have an ombudsman to consider such cases and recommend justice. Does she agree, however, that the Government's response undermines the whole office of the ombudsman? Treating this report in such a way could create a precedent for future ombudsman reports being ignored and recommendations being cherry-picked.

Susan Kramer: I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Everything that we do has the potential to create a precedent. I and, I suspect, many other hon. Members would like the ombudsman's role to be accepted and strengthened, rather than weakened dramatically.
	I want quickly to raise a second issue. What, for most of my constituents, goes to the heart of the matter is the issue of disproportionate impact, which is to be the principle for compensation payments. In June 2009, Sir John Chadwick, who was asked to consult on this matter, used the following phrase:
	I am satisfied that the Terms of Reference-
	his terms of reference-
	do not require me to engage in any form of means-testing in relation to individual policyholders.
	What we have heard from Treasury Ministers today seems to conflict with that statement. Therefore, I hope finally to hear in the winding-up speech a definition of disproportionate impact. I certainly do not want to argue against a principle if the Government have already abandoned it, but it did not sound to me, from the Chief Secretary's opening speech, as if they have.

Mark Durkan: Like many of us, the hon. Lady has received many representations from constituents and others. Has she received any representation from any policyholder who feels that they suffered, or whom she believes suffered, merely a proportionate impact?

Susan Kramer: The hon. Gentleman speaks with great common sense and reflects the voices in the letters and representations that I have received.

Andrew Stunell: I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend when she is in such fine form, but does she not also agree that the fact that the judicial review struck down the Government's alternative plans shows very clearly that the Government have been on the wrong foot right the way through in their response to the ombudsman?

Susan Kramer: I am glad that the judicial review has been raised, and I agree with my hon. Friend. I do not want to repeat the comments about the judicial review made by my distinguished neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), in his opening speech, because he summed up most of the situation extremely effectively. However, I want to point to one issue raised on the Floor: the presumption that somehow there is some resistance to the principle of compensating for regulatory maladministration. Comments were made by the judges on precisely that issue. We should pay attention to such comments when they come from such a distinguished source. They said that they
	found no evidentiary support, at least in the material before us, for the claim...that Parliament 'has accepted' that compensation for regulatory failure is 'not generally appropriate'.
	These are judges. They understand how to read legislation and  Hansard, and they did not think that this House had set up a barrier, or raised some principle, against compensating for regulatory maladministration. I understand the judges' words to mean that we might strongly presume that the House expects regulatory maladministration-as others have said, we are not talking about market or management failure at Equitable Life-by the regulator to lead to some form of compensation, or the expectation of it.
	I do not want to take up the time of the House by talking about my many individual cases, but it is important to make it clear again on the Floor of the House-this has come up in previous debates-that people impacted by maladministration do not form a select group of highly paid, wealthy professionals who happened to take out exotic life policies. Those who have been impacted in my community range across the social scale. Some are on very low and meagre incomes; others are on decent incomes. However, the notion that this is a case of the rich coming to us with a cry from the heart is completely false, yet often that belief seems to underpin much of the thinking of those on the Treasury Bench.
	I want to make a plea that I have made before on the Floor of the House: we should be able to hold such a debate in Government time. We have heard that from others, but we all ought to make it clear that this is our expectation. Many people will resist supporting a motion tabled by an Opposition party, particularly on one of its Opposition days, merely on the principle that that is what is done. That is unfortunate, because an issue like this, given the suffering that has been caused, overrides any such facile view of how Parliament should function. The Government keep challenging us, over and over again, on our position on this issue, but surely this is exactly the kind of instance in which the Government should be introducing the debate, presenting it to the House and allowing the House the final word. We live in a parliamentary democracy, and surely we must fight for that principle, as well as the principle of justice-real justice-for our constituents.
	I want to make one last remark on Sir John Chadwick. I have great respect for him, but he has been very resistant to meeting the all-party group on Equitable Life policyholders, of which I happen to be the secretary. I find that unfortunate and I take it to mean that the debate that he is conducting is far less well informed than it should be. I ask the House to call again on Sir John Chadwick to rethink his interest in excluding Members of Parliament from considering these issues.

Fabian Hamilton: I start by thanking the Chief Secretary for reiterating the apology given by his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), which was certainly a good start.
	Earlier, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt), who is no longer present in the Chamber, said in an intervention that policyholders should be able to come forward and apply for compensation against criteria and for a sum of money determined by this House. That was reiterated, in a way, by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), who said-many of us agree with him-that we are talking about a matter for the whole House. It is a matter that should be discussed without partisan interest, but in the interests of our constituents only, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) has said.
	I was interested in the contribution made by the shadow Chief Secretary, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban). He said in his conclusion that the subject of this debate is not a partisan issue. I agree with that: it is not a partisan issue, and I hope that the parties here will not make it a party political issue for their own gain. It is something that the public look to this House as a whole, and that our constituents look to us as individuals, to put right.
	On 24 June, I had an Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall. I was subsequently asked to stand as the joint chairman of the all-party group on justice for Equitable Life policyholders, which I agreed to do. There are many officers here today, from all parts of the House, who support that group and its principle of justice for those policyholders. I do not want to repeat the remarks that I made on 24 June, but I want to draw out some important points from that speech, to remind hon. Members and those on the Government Front Bench exactly why we are holding this debate. I am sorry that this debate is being held in Opposition time, as many hon. Members have said, because that has certain implications for the way in which Members vote.
	I said on 24 June that I did not want simply to repeat the words that had been said in previous debates. I wanted to try to bring to the House some of the experiences of my constituents to remind us why we are debating the issue yet again, and to try to persuade the Government to agree to the recommendations contained in the parliamentary ombudsman's original report, Equitable Life: a decade of regulatory failure, which was published in July 2008.
	As we know, after the publication of Ann Abraham's report, the Public Administration Committee produced a report entitled Justice delayed, on 11 December 2008. On 5 May this year, the parliamentary ombudsman published a further report, Injustice unremedied, which has been referred to on a number of occasions. There is no shortage of reports, just a shortage of justice for those who through no fault of their own have suffered huge losses in their life savings, accrued over years of hard work. That surely cannot be right.
	Like many other hon. Members who until recently knew little about how all that had come about, I was not very sympathetic at first. However, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park has said, as much as the world's oldest mutual insurance company had overstretched itself and as much as the real issue was poor regulation, I became more and more concerned about what my constituents were telling me. I suspect that that experience has been echoed throughout the House, and that there is not one Member who has not received correspondence from constituents about Equitable Life.
	The Public Administration Committee said in the introduction to its December 2008 report:
	Over the last eight years many of those members and their families have suffered great anxiety as policy values were cut and pension payments reduced. Many are no longer alive,
	as has been said,
	and will be unable to benefit personally from any compensation. We share both a deep sense of frustration and continuing outrage that the situation has remained unresolved for so long.
	The parliamentary ombudsman's second report, Injustice unremedied: the Government's response on Equitable Life, is scathing about the inaction on her initial recommendations from July 2008. Indeed, she said in that report:
	I was deeply disappointed that the Government chose to reject many of the findings that I had made, when I was acting independently,
	as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase pointed out,
	on behalf of Parliament and after a detailed and exhaustive investigation.
	I said that I would take a little of the House's time in highlighting some of the cases that have been brought to my attention by constituents. I want to concentrate on one case only, which I am sure will ring a bell with many Members. This particular lady, Mrs. H of north Leeds, told me that her modest income of £200 a month was reduced overnight to less than £100, although she now receives about £120. She is 83 years old. She was dependent on that £200 each month, so when it was initially reduced by more than half, she found it hard to cope financially. It was only the help from her ex-husband that kept her going. However, she still struggles every month, owing to the continued shortfall in income.
	Why, then, is the regulator to blame? We have heard a number of views on that this afternoon. Surely investors must have understood that their investments could decrease as well as increase. How could Equitable Life maintain a rate of return and a guaranteed annuity rate beyond those of any competitor in the market? Those are the questions that Ann Abraham addressed in her initial report of July 2008, which took four years to complete. Her answers are at the heart of the anger expressed by investors through the Equitable members action group. At the core of the problem is the fact that Equitable simply could not meet its obligations-obligations that it had made for itself, because it had made no provision for guarantees against low interest rates on policies issued before 1988.
	We know also that, following the House of Lords ruling in July 2000, the society stopped taking new business in December of that year, which effectively spelled the end for Equitable. More than 1 million policyholders found that they faced cuts in their bonuses and annuities, which caused a huge loss of income-income on which many of those small investors depended. After all, the average investment for the 500,000 individual policyholders was just £45,000, which even at its height yielded no more than £300 a month, according to EMAG.
	As has been pointed out, we in this country, along with many countries in the western world, have a growing problem: the problem of an ageing population that needs to be encouraged to make greater provision for its retirement and old age, as the state will simply not have sufficient resources to provide enough money in statutory pension payments. That is a controversial issue and a source of great debate. The problem will only become worse as the years pass and the proportion of younger people in work declines in relation to those in retirement.
	It is already clear that my generation-those in their mid-50s-will have to work longer before retirement, whichever party wins the next general election. However, unless we can save more and see our savings grow securely, there will be little confidence that there is any point in saving at all. I believe-many other Members have also expressed this view-that the Equitable Life scandal has severely reduced the confidence that the people of this country have in the principle of saving for retirement.

Anne Milton: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are two emotions? The first is the anger of the policyholders, who are angry that they have been let down by a system that they believed in, and the second is the one that he is talking about, involving trust. There has been a huge loss of trust, not only in the Government, but in the ability of those in this House to bring such matters forward, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) pointed out earlier.

Fabian Hamilton: I agree; indeed, the situation is much more serious. People always lose confidence in the Government of the day, because they blame them for everything. However, people have enormous trust in this House. They may not like MPs or Parliament generally, but they like their constituency MP. They look to us to come here and use this House to redress injustice. It is the loss of trust in this House that worries me far more than the loss of trust in the Government-a Government whom I, of course, wholeheartedly support.

Bob Neill: I follow the hon. Gentleman's interest in such matters. Following that point, does he agree that the loss of trust is compounded in this instance? Not only is there an appearance of failing to take on board the recommendations of independent adjudicators, but people still have some trust in the courts system, and the condemnation in Lord Justice Carnwath's judgment of the stance taken is comprehensive. If the House ignores the judgment of distinguished lords justices sitting in the divisional court, it will make people's lack of faith and trust in the House even worse, and compound this very real problem. As the hon. Gentleman says, it will create real difficulty for people on limited incomes.

Fabian Hamilton: That is why I agree with many right hon. and hon. Members-especially my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase-that the decision on how we should respond must be a matter for this House. The hon. Member for Reigate also made that point. I fully accept that there are huge implications for the Treasury and for taxpayers' money, but we have seen far greater sums of money being used in the past 12 months to rescue our banking system-rightly, in my opinion. Surely, Equitable Life investors who have lost out as a result of regulatory failure deserve the justice not only that the courts have said they should receive but that the ultimate court in the land, this House, thinks they should have. I urge the Government to allow sufficient Government time for a full, proper debate on this matter, with a free vote, so that we can make our views as Members known to our constituents and give our constituents the justice that they deserve.
	If investing a large proportion of earnings results in that money either disappearing or being greatly reduced in value, the resulting lack of trust in the system will lead to increased poverty in old age. It will also remove any incentive to make personal provision from a lifetime's earnings. In the end, the state will have to foot the bill, thus increasing the cost to us all through taxation.
	It has been said that this is a scandal that affected only the well-off, and that ordinary people with relatively small savings were not involved. Let me remind hon. Members and the Government that EMAG told the Public Administration Committee that
	the majority of Equitable Life's policyholders had modest sized pensions and were not 'fat cats' who 'risked their money to get above average returns'. In particular, the average investment of the half million individual policyholders amounted to £45,000 each, which in today's money would buy a pension paying around £75 per week.

Daniel Kawczynski: I am grateful to my fellow co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Equitable Life for allowing me to intervene. His comments about Members of Parliament scrutinising this issue resonate with me. Does he agree that it is important for outside bodies-and for Sir John Chadwick in particular-to come before the House and to be held to account? Does he share my concern that Sir John Chadwick has refused to come to Parliament to interact with members of the all-party group?

Fabian Hamilton: My honourable co-chair makes a good point. It has already been pointed out that, since Sir John Chadwick was appointed, he has refused to come to the House or to deal with individual Members. It is time that members of the all-party group, on behalf of all Members, were able to meet him and question him on the way in which he is setting about the business of remedying this injustice. I urge him from these Benches-I hope on behalf of all hon. Members-to talk to Members of Parliament as soon as he possibly can. It is important that he should be accountable to us, and that our constituents should be able to see that he is not refusing to talk to us.
	I conclude by once again asking the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury to answer the four questions that I put at the end of my Adjournment debate on 24 June. I hope that the House will forgive me for reiterating these points. Sadly, she ignored them completely at the end of that debate, and I hope that she will be able to respond to some or all of them today.
	First, will she amend Sir John Chadwick's terms of reference to include all the recommendations of the parliamentary ombudsman's report, Equitable Life: a decade of regulatory failure? Secondly, will she agree to implement EMAG's proposal that Parliament set a total amount of compensation for individual policyholders affected by the collapse of Equitable Life, then allow the proposed tribunal to get on with the job of distributing that money quickly and fairly? Thirdly, will she accept that the delay caused so far has meant that many policyholders who suffered through no fault of their own have either endured financial hardship or died in the meantime? My understanding is that 15 such policyholders die each day. Fourthly, does she accept that, for many, the phrase injustice unremedied has real meaning, and that it is about time that the hundreds of thousands of investors received real justice?
	If the Minister can answer these questions positively, this injustice could be brought to an end rapidly and the Government would receive the credit for its resolution. If not, I fear that the resentment and bitterness will continue, with huge cost to the individuals who have suffered and to the country as a whole. I remind the House that justice delayed is justice denied.

John Barrett: I shall not take the full allocation of my time in the debate, to ensure that all my colleagues who wish to speak can also get in. I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) for his opening speech, and I shall try not to repeat the points that he made. I advise anyone reading this in  Hansard that his speech is worth reading from start to finish.
	I am delighted to have been called to speak today. I remind the House of a previous Liberal Democrat Opposition day motion on an issue of fairness and justice. At that time, many MPs from all parties got together and did the right thing. That day, it was for the Gurkhas, and common sense and decency prevailed. Equitable Life policyholders, who I am sure will be following today's debate, will be hoping for more of the same from the House today. Parliament was in the news last week for all the wrong reasons, and today's debate gives us a chance to show this place at its best.
	It is a scandal that we even need to have this debate. Quite apart from the number of times we have spoken about this issue in this place and in Westminster Hall over the years, we have also had an ombudsman's report, a damning Public Administration Committee report, an almost unprecedented special report from the ombudsman and now a High Court ruling, all of which concluded that there is an injustice that needs to be remedied quickly. It seems that it is only the Government who do not get the message.
	Today's debate takes place in the context of last week's court ruling. Treasury officials tried their best to spin the outcome, but it was clear to everyone, including the judge, that the policyholders were the principal victors. I was glad to hear yesterday that the Government will not be seeking to take the decision to appeal. Of course, we should remember that, were it not for the tenacity of EMAG in bringing the case to court, it is likely that the Government would have got away with their inadequate response to Ann Abraham's initial report. That raises this question: what use is an ombudsman, if they are simply ignored by Ministers and the Government? The fact that the ombudsman felt that she had to issue a special report to highlight the Government's inaction is a disgrace. This is only the fifth time in 42 years that the ombudsman has felt moved to use the so-called nuclear option, and it shows how serious the Government's negligence has been.

Daniel Kawczynski: The hon. Gentleman paid tribute to EMAG, and I echo that sentiment. Will he join me in particularly congratulating Mr. Paul Braithwaite, who has spearheaded this campaign? He has been to the House of Commons on many occasions to interact with the all-party group on Equitable Life, and he has really driven the campaign forward.

John Barrett: I am happy to concur with that.
	A lobby of Parliament by Equitable Life policyholders is scheduled to take place next month. I have read that the lobbyists will be drawing our attention to the fact that 15 policyholders die each day waiting for justice while the Government drag their heels. It is a great testament to the policyholders that they are prepared to keep fighting for the cause not only for themselves, but for those who are no longer with us. Let us be very clear, however: they should not still have to be fighting.
	Like all hon. Members, I have a great many constituents who been affected by the collapse of Equitable Life. They include Ian Fairweather, John Stepney, James Michael Morton, Hana Hornung and John Smith, among many others. Those people did the right thing and made provision for their retirement. The proposed payout scheme looks as though it will leave 90 per cent. of policyholders with little or no help at all. That is simply not good enough. In fact, it makes me think of my constituent, Joe Shepherd, who has been fighting for justice in pensions-not against Equitable Life-for 19 years. He has gone through three MPs and when I stand down at the next election, he will be into his fourth. He is now in his 80s and he is the last pensioner from the relevant company left, yet he has still not had justice. I dread to think how many Equitable Life people will be in the same position.
	If Equitable Life policyholders are left with nothing, what message does that send out to the next generation, who are already reluctant to save towards their pensions? My constituents who have lost significant sums of money are justified in asking why Equitable Life is treated so differently from a failed bank. I have no good answer for them. At today's Prime Minister's Question Time, the Prime Minister responded to one of the later questions by saying that not one saver had lost money in a British bank. We in this place have to ask why the Government are not giving the same pledge to Equitable Life savers.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham mentioned earlier that some Members were not elected to this place when the whole saga started. Many Members, for the same reason as me or for other reasons, will not be in this place when-hopefully-the payments start to go through. In my own city of Edinburgh, which has seen many Equitable Life members badly hit, I believe that a number of MPs, including a number of Labour MPs, will lose their seats at the next election. I think that they will have let down Equitable Life policyholders.
	The treatment of Equitable Life policyholders is one of the great injustices of this Parliament. It is a mess of this Parliament's making and we need to sort it out and to do it quickly. The Government have just over two weeks to give their response to the High Court ruling. The great tragedy is that for too many policyholders, time has already run out.

Daniel Rogerson: I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on introducing the debate and making use of this Opposition day to outline, as other hon. Members have said, what could have been done differently by the Government. It is very important to have this debate, carrying on from our previous debate in Westminster Hall. I thus congratulate my hon. Friend on his use of Opposition day time and, of course, on his excellent introduction and the way in which he framed this afternoon's debate.
	I also pay tribute, as have others, to the Equitable members action group, to the all-party group and the Select Committee, which has examined the issue in detail. I also mention the work of the ombudsman: although at least one other hon. Member has commented on how long that took, it is nevertheless part of the process of getting us to where we are today.
	Hon. Members of all parties have been assiduous in pursuing this issue on behalf of individual constituents, but also because most of us are motivated, I hope, by a sense of justice in all we do. I sometimes think that there is little more than a great injustice-whether it be to an individual or to a whole group of people-that can motivate MPs in taking hold of particular issues and not letting them go. This situation falls into the category of a whole group, as many people across the country are affected by the issue and they will continue to be affected by it until they have some form of resolution.
	I am pleased that so many Members have had the courage of their convictions and signed early-day motion 1423, which I hope is a statement of intent for later today. What we are debating today is essentially the same principles as are in the motion. Although I understand that Labour Members find themselves in some difficulty in thinking about how to vote on an Opposition day motion, I hope that they can set it aside, because, as has been said, today provides our only opportunity. While many hon. Members have expressed a hope that the Government will bring something forward to return to the issue later on, I have to say that the evidence thus far does not lead me to the conclusion that that will happen. This may well be the only opportunity that the House has in the near future to get something on the record and have a vote on this crucial issue. I urge Labour Members-I understand their difficulty-to carry through what they have already done in signing the early-day motion.
	In 2000, what happened through Equitable Life's default was hugely painful for all those who had invested, but those involved in the mismanagement of the funds are not solely to blame. The Government as a regulator and the agencies that the Government established to regulate financial matters have been shown, sadly, to have failed time and again in recent years. We must be absolutely clear that those failures were under the watch of this Government and their predecessor, as they looked into what was going on in Equitable Life. The people who invested in good faith expected the regulatory mechanisms to guarantee their interests, so they feel very let down. They have, of course, been let down particularly badly.
	What action, then, can we take finally to offer some justice? The Government say that ex gratia payments are an adequate mechanism for providing that, but I am not convinced that they are. Members of the action group, who have acted very effectively on behalf of all the Equitable members, certainly do not feel that that is the case. Of course, whatever happens will cost money, but as other hon. Members have said, the Government have found the money in other circumstances-to bail out the banks, for example. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham made the point that investors in banks found their interests protected and he asked why Equitable members should not also find their interests protected in the same way.
	Money has also been squandered in other recent Government pet projects-on big IT projects and certain foreign adventures that have been launched against the demonstrated will of the people living out there in the relevant countries. Money has been found for those things, but not, it seems, in this case. It may well be painful to find the resources to provide this measure of justice, as we are being invited to do, but however difficult it is, the central issue is natural justice and it must be met.
	At every turn, the Government have dragged their heels. Many Members have sought to focus on the imperative to get this issue dealt with as soon as possible because some of the people involved are, sadly, no longer with us-and there are others who, sadly, will not live to see the benefit of any compensation scheme. We must not allow any imperative to act against the issues of fairness that EMAG has raised all along.
	In other fields, I know that the Government have sought to speed the processes up. Sometimes, in my view, they have done so against the interest of securing the right resolution. In a planning Bill of a couple of years ago, for example, there was an absolute dedication to getting all major infrastructure planning issues sorted out in six months; what is important to me, however, is reaching the right decisions in these circumstances. Yes, time is important, but it is not the only thing that we have to consider.
	I have been in regular correspondence with a number of my constituents affected by Equitable Life. There are about 50 or so of them, but I well know that there are many more in my constituency who have not contacted me about it. They have contacted EMAG and may be cynical about whether they will ever get the resolution they want and deserve. In every one of our constituencies, there are so many people affected, and they are watching what we are discussing here this afternoon.
	I spoke to a couple of constituents this morning. What touched me is that they both prefaced their remarks by saying, Others are far worse off than I am. Others are going to be affected worse. My retirement plans have been affected, as has my ability to do things like replace my car, which is currently on its last legs, but I have lost only £9,000-and in the other case, it was between £13,000 and £14,000. Those are significant sums for those people, but I thought it revealing that they adopted the approach of talking about others who were even worse off than themselves.
	We clearly need a scheme that is reasonable and takes account of the constraints on resourcing, but it must also compensate properly and it must not be a token effort. In order to be reassured that that is the case, it needs to be overseen, as my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham said earlier, by an independent tribunal. He set out how that could happen without setting aside the work put in up to now.

Bob Neill: I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman, whose experience in his constituency is similar to mine. Is not the conclusion he advances reinforced by the findings of the Public Administration Select Committee, which rightly made it clear that compensation was
	not a matter of charity, but a requirement of justice to redress a wrong?
	Should that not be the principle that underlies any decision taken on this matter?

Daniel Rogerson: As ever, the hon. Gentleman speaks with great authority, and I agree with his comments. As many hon. Members have said, we must consider an approach that is based not on issues of hardship and on means-testing, but on justice. The Government's written responses have not contained a good enough apology for the failings that occurred, and it would reassure people to see that in writing. We need a fuller apology, something that provides hope for those Equitable members who are affected, and genuine measures that offer them justice.
	Earlier, I probed those on the Conservative Front Bench on their proposals, and I completely understand their desire to push forward and criticise the Government for the speed of their response. However, bearing in mind that they have added their signatures to the motion tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends, which is welcome, I am disappointed that they are stepping back a little from an independent tribunal, which is crucial to reassuring Equitable members that their interests are being looked after.

Denis MacShane: The hon. Gentleman makes his case calmly and fairly, and it will have an echo in my constituency. It is good that he is putting ideas in front of us. Obviously, in the Division, which will be on party political lines, we will vote as we will. May I say that I hope the Government take on board some of the ideas put forward, because an injustice was done and needs to be put right? I congratulate him on his thoughtful and measured case.

Daniel Rogerson: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks, although I am perhaps slightly disappointed by the signal he has sent as to which Lobby he might find himself in later. I hope that he will take the chance to reconsider that on the basis of further contributions.

John Barrett: Will my hon. Friend expand on why the decision ought not to be made on party political lines?

Daniel Rogerson: Many hon. Members have served in local government, where, when difficult decisions are faced, administrations often talk about being above, and not wanting to get into, party politics. However, when the boot is on the other foot, they are quite happy. When the courts have handed such an issue back to the House, for it to respond to the ombudsman, hon. Members must take a view based on the interests of Equitable members in their constituencies, irrespective of which party has put forward the proposals. I hope that they will do that later, and as has rightly been pointed out, many Members signed the early-day motion and put their comments on the record. Therefore, if they decide to vote with us, it should be easier for them to justify that decision to their Whips.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) also drew a strong parallel with an earlier Liberal Democrat Opposition day vote on the Gurkhas. I had the honour of being a Teller on that occasion, and in what I hope is a sign of things to come, I delivered the verdict to the House. Tonight, I hope that hon. Members across the House will unite to send a strong signal to Equitable members and the Government that the Government's proposals are inadequate, that we need to focus on what the ombudsman, EMAG and people across the country have said would be the right, meaningful compensation, and that we need to do that quickly.

Mark Durkan: Other right hon. and hon. Members have rightly raised the issue of the proper standing and treatment of the parliamentary ombudsman by the House and by Government. At a time when the House's reputation has taken all sorts of damage over expenses, we need to remind ourselves that people have a more fundamental question about not the expense but the worth of the House. When Equitable Life policyholders see the clear findings of the ombudsman evaded and dismissed, and the work and worth of the ombudsman's report denigrated by Government, that raises questions about the credibility of the parliamentary apparatus.
	Given the number of Members who have signed early-day motions and written replies to Equitable Life policyholders, those policyholders know that a clear majority in the House wish to see proper remedy for their injustice. But when we allow ourselves to be frustrated by procedural chicanery, they question the worth, relevance and responsiveness of the House. If even a Select Committee being clear in its findings and conclusions on the issues can count for little, we should join the public in being worried about the role and relevance of the House.
	It has taken a court case to bring acknowledgement of the kind that we have seen from the Government this week, in accepting findings of the ombudsman that they had previously resisted and rejected. I say to hon. Friends who approve of the terms of the Government's amendment that we should remind ourselves that those terms would probably be different had last week's court case not taken place, and the Government not moved to accept the findings in the way that they did.
	I am also a little perturbed that the Government have sought to downplay the scale and nature of some of those findings, and to minimise the court's findings and the fact that it came down heavily against the position taken persistently by the Treasury. For the Government to say, It was only on this thing that the court came down against us, and they were for us on something else, is like trying to pretend that a tyre is only flat at the bottom. It is simply not a credible position. Thankfully, the House has the benefit of that important judgment, and the Government are now showing the wisdom and responsiveness at least to accept key aspects of the judgment, which I welcome.
	However, we know from the written ministerial statement and some of what was said today that serious questions still arise. I listened to the Chief Secretary tell us that the Government's ex gratia payment scheme, based on Sir John Chadwick's proposals, will be up and running by spring. Therefore, we must ask ourselves: what exactly does up and running mean? Does it mean that the scheme is coming soon, or will be open for business soon? I hope the Exchequer Secretary will tell us later.

Mark Lazarowicz: I hope the Exchequer Secretary will clarify that point, because my understanding was that the scheme would be available by the spring, not that money would be going out by then.

Mark Durkan: I thank my hon. Friend for amplifying my question. We all want to know what up and running means. We also heard the Chief Secretary, in reply to a question, say that he had spoken to Sir John Chadwick, either before the summer or in early summer. Another hon. Member asked whether Sir John Chadwick had adequate resources or needed more. Since the judgment, however, the scope of Sir John Chadwick's work has expanded. Instead of going back to July 1995, it must go back to July 1991. I wonder whether the Chief Secretary should be talking to Sir John Chadwick again to see whether, in the light of the judgment, he has sufficient resources. If, as the statement admits, his work has additional scope, does he not need additional resources? As other hon. Members have raised the failure of Sir John Chadwick directly and sensibly to engage with the all-party group or any other Member, such engagement might be usefully explored, so that we fully understand the implications of the court case for his continuing work.

John Butterfill: The hon. Gentleman will know from my previous interventions on the subject that many of my constituents, including members of my own family, have been affected. Does he agree, however, that it is strange that the Government should still hang on to some vestige of a means test for people who have suffered so badly? During the banking crisis, they did not means-test those who might have lost their money in a bank; they paid up. Why should this be different?

Mark Durkan: The hon. Gentleman has made his point very eloquently. Many of us have questioned the Government's announcement that ex gratia payments will be made to people who have suffered disproportionate impact. I understand why the Chief Secretary or other Ministers may be unwilling to give a single example of disproportionate impact, and probably cannot provide a comprehensive definition of everyone who has suffered one, but could we at least be given a definition of a proportionate impact? That would enable us to identify those who might be counted out, although I have certainly not heard from anyone who feels that he or she has suffered proportionate impact.

Daniel Kawczynski: The hon. Gentleman mentioned the resources that Sir John Chadwick had at his disposal, and that is critical to the speed with which the issue will be resolved. However, EMAG has expressed the fear that some of the resources may be inappropriate, because one of Sir John's most important advisers has been seconded by No. 10 Downing street. EMAG feels that that constitutes a conflict of interests.

Mark Durkan: Obviously there are various arguments to be made about foxes and chickens, but, given that the Government have accepted the court judgment, I think we should be asking how we get to where we need to be from here, rather than necessarily testing any of the personnel who have been involved so far.
	This situation, which long predates my time in the House, has continued for far too long and affected far too many people. Those people were bemused by jargon; then, just when the way seemed clear, there was obfuscation and evasion. It has been like one of those Homer Simpson nightmares. Every time people think that the nightmare is reaching a conclusion, there is some new twist, and off it goes in another awful direction. They are left bewildered, and with a further sense of loss, suffering and frustration to add to their ongoing loss. We need to bring this scandal to an end by providing a remedy for the clear injustice that has been identified.
	As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) pointed out, people are particularly at a loss to understand why their situation has dragged on for so long, and why the Government have been so intensely resistant when it is possible to apply so many measures to underwrite the losses-or potential losses-faced by others such as Icelandic banks. People will inevitably and sensibly draw those comparisons. It is not a matter of their being jealous or unduly concerned about themselves. Those are natural questions asked by policyholders, and asked by us, as public representatives, in the House.
	If it is right to underwrite others in the context of the banks because we want to underpin the stability of the finance system, surely it is right to provide a proper remedy for these policyholders so that we can underpin confidence in the pension system in the future. If we want to encourage people to save for their pensions, and if we want to encourage them to become involved in schemes such as this-as we are doing increasingly; indeed, we are imposing on them a requirement to become involved-we must at least give them some basis for confidence. That is why we need to move further and faster.
	We know that EMAG has said that, for the purpose of an overall outcome, it wishes the House to identify a sum that would be available to remedy its members' plight. In the context of either an outright compensation scheme or the ex gratia payment scheme to which the Government have referred, I hope that the Exchequer Secretary will tell us whether, if the scheme is to be up and running by next spring, the Government will announce a clear quantum sum that will be available. Will we hear from them by the time of the pre-Budget report, for instance? If in telling us that the scheme will be up and running by the spring of next year, the Government want us to believe that money will be paid out during the next financial year, when will we hear what quantum will be available? If the Government continue not to give any indication of the amount that they intend to make available, we shall inevitably have doubts about their real intent.
	I know that the issue of the money will be difficult, but in a sense it brings us to the real issue of what is or is not considered by the Treasury to be disproportionate. When a Treasury statement talks of policyholders suffering a disproportionate impact, we know that the Treasury's real motivating concern is fear of the disproportionate impact of a compensation scheme on the public purse. If that is the real fear, let the debate be clear about that, let the Government be clear about it, and let the Government be clear about what they think would be a proportionate sum of money to offer. The rest of us, having considered the issue properly in today's debate, can then decide whether that amount is adequate, realistic or meaningful.

Michael Weir: As a number of Members have observed, this matter has been dragging on for many years. After all the years that I have spent dealing with it, I have a file full of letters and reports that would choke an elephant. Like other Members, I have many elderly constituents who are affected by the collapse of Equitable Life, and, sadly, some have died waiting for justice. Other Members have also made a point with which I strongly agree: that the Equitable Life crisis is part of a much more general crisis of confidence in savings and pensions. If we do not get this right-if we do not demonstrate that people can expect justice when things go wrong through regulatory fault-we shall have a serious problem with persuading people to save for pensions and their own future.
	Many of my constituents, like those of other Members, have approached me and asked, If the Government can bail out the banks, why will they not do anything about my problem with Equitable Life? We can argue about the macro-economics, the economy and the need to bail out the banks, but it is a reasonable question. However, there is a better analogy to be made, although I appreciate that it is not exact. The Government instituted the Pension Protection Fund. They rightly took action to help people who found themselves in danger of losing out when company pension funds were becoming insolvent-ensuring that they received a large proportion of the available funds so that they would not face poverty in retirement-and to shore up the sector.
	It seems to me that the same principle should apply in the case of Equitable Life. Equitable Life was effectively a pension scheme for, in particular, many self-employed small business people. Those people invested in Equitable Life policies because Equitable Life was seen as a large and very sound company. Many financial advisers pushed those policies over many years, especially-as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer)-to small business men. Now those people find that their pension pot has effectively disappeared, or at least been severely reduced. What is the difference between them and those whose company pension funds become insolvent, other than the fact that they are losing out partly because of a failure of regulation? Indeed, in many ways they are in a stronger position than others to demand compensation. That is particularly true in view of the fact that, at least for part of the time involved, the regulator of Equitable Life was the Treasury.
	I was deeply troubled by what the Minister said in his opening speech. He said that there was no obligation for compensation to be provided. I cannot believe that that is the case, given that the Government were effectively the regulator for at least part of the time. I understand to some extent the Minister's concern about the impact on public funds of compensating all Equitable Life policy-holders who have lost out as a result of the failure of regulation, but I feel that to impose the scheme that the Government are proposing goes against natural justice. If a loss has been suffered through maladministration, surely the victim of that maladministration is entitled to compensation regardless of his or her personal circumstances.
	There is a question that still hovers over this issue. It is to do with the possible means-testing of the victims of the Equitable Life collapse. The Minister has been asked on many occasions in the debate to define disproportionate loss. It is not at all clear what that means-how it will be determined and what it means for people. Given the Minister's comments, it seems to me that in the circumstances under discussion, the concept of disproportionate loss clearly amounts to a means test applied to the person who has suffered a loss from the failure of Equitable Life. Even if that is the case, it is still not clear how the concept is to be determined, so we need clarity. Is the Minister talking about a disproportionate loss on a particular class of investment or is this about the personal circumstances of an individual? We need to know.
	The Minister said that the Government's position was an attempt to speed up the system, and after 10 years it could certainly do with some speeding up. He attacked the alternative system involving a tribunal by saying there would have to be a case-by-case investigation-but if the Government are determined to impose a concept of disproportionate loss and that is to be conducted through a means test on the individual, how will that be done unless each case is gone through separately, looking at the loss suffered and the personal circumstances of the individual? It therefore does not seem to me that imposing this strange concept, which is nowhere explained, will speed up the system at all. I fear the system will grind even closer to a halt.
	Equitable Life policyholders have waited 10 years for some justice. We have inched forward slowly. In January, I spoke in a debate on this issue and I described the Government's position as being like that of an old lag appearing in a criminal court who starts with an outright denial, but as the evidence accumulates reluctantly accepts he will have to plead, and then makes a half-hearted plea and tries to wriggle out of the consequences of his actions later. That is exactly the position the Government are in. Even after the judicial review, they tried to spin things to suggest that they had in some way won it. It was very clear that they had not. The judge ordered that this matter be re-examined. The Government must throw up their hands and admit that there is a responsibility here, and introduce a system that is clear and fair, and will quickly deliver for Equitable Life policyholders.
	I was disappointed in the comments of the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), who opened for the Conservatives, because their policy on this is unclear. From the comments made, it seemed to me that if by any chance they were to form the next Administration nothing much would change, because the hon. Gentleman was unwilling to answer straight questions about how they would deal with the situation. It seemed to me that if the Government manage to get a system up and running by the time of the next election, the Conservatives would just continue it. I ask the hon. Gentleman to make it clear what the Conservatives' position will be. If a system is up and running by that time, will they reopen it and look at the tribunal system, and give real justice to Equitable Life policyholders?

Lorely Burt: I shall be very brief, as I know that other Members wish to speak.
	I fervently hope that we are now reaching the end of this decade-long saga, in which 30,000 people have died waiting for justice. One million investors have lost up to half their pensions, amounting to an estimated £5 billion, and they were people who did the right thing: they saved for their retirement, but they have been let down by a series of regulatory failures by this Government.
	What does this mean in human terms, however? I shall explain by recounting just two stories that west midlands Equitable Life investors have told me. It means a couple having to sell their lovely retirement bungalow and move into a caravan. It means that instead of going to the shops with enough money to be able to enjoy the experience of shopping and buying what was described to me as nice things, they have to scratch around for the cheapest reduced items just to make ends meet. It may not mean destitution in many cases, but for most of such people it means the destruction of a quality of life that they saved for, made sacrifices for and deserved.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) has outlined the history of this sorry episode and I will not repeat it now. I do not want to dwell on the shameful history of how this Government have prevaricated ever since the publication of ombudsman Ann Abraham's report in July 2008, so aptly subtitled A decade of regulatory failure, although I entirely share her frustration at the prevarication of the Government in their response, which prompted her to take the unprecedented step of issuing a second report this May, called Injustice unremedied. I am not going to dwell on the Government's response, which was to attempt to exclude up to 90 per cent. of pensioners from any compensation at all, but I do wonder how a Government who purport to be a compassionate Government could allow so many people to suffer for so long, ignoring the ombudsman's findings and trying to evade paying compensation.
	I welcome the decision of Lord Justice Carnwath and Mr. Justice Gross backing the decision of the ombudsman that compensation should be paid back to 1991, not 1995 as the Government wanted, and I implore Sir John Chadwick to come up with a compensation scheme with the utmost urgency so that as few more pensioners as possible have to die without ever seeing justice in their lifetime.
	I ask the Minister to say what will happen in respect of pensioners who have died. My understanding is that their money will be forfeited altogether, so that neither they nor their surviving relatives will ever benefit. If this is the case, is there any provision for making some compensation available to their estate even when, because of the great length of time this has taken, it is not only they but their families who would otherwise lose out?
	Finally, as a final act of compassion, I ask the Government to ensure that a compensation scheme will be in place and payments will already be being made by the time they leave office and we have a general election next year.

Daniel Kawczynski: I apologise for not being present at the start of the debate; I had to attend a pressing constituency meeting.
	I set up the all-party group on justice for Equitable Life policyholders primarily because of my belief in the parliamentary ombudsman system. We must protect the ombudsman's findings, and she has stated unequivocally that there has been regulatory failure. We as parliamentarians have to do everything possible to ensure that her findings and her position are respected in this House.
	As a constituency MP, I rely on ombudsmen on many occasions to assist me with difficulties that constituents are facing. The ombudsmen work so hard and do such sterling work that I wish to pay tribute to all of them. If their views are ignored, that simply chips away at their position and undermines them.
	The all-party group has become very large, as many Members of Parliament have joined it. I wish to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton), who is my co-chairman, to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), who plays an active part in the group, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), who takes a great interest in it and comes to our meetings. Some 42 Labour Members of Parliament have joined the group, some of whom represent key marginal seats. I will be watching closely how they vote this evening, because they have joined an all-party group that seeks justice for Equitable Life policyholders and I do not see how someone who is a member of such a group can vote against this Liberal Democrat motion. As has been stated on many occasions, Equitable Life policyholders have suffered terrible financial problems and are very frustrated by the lack of action. As we have also heard today, every day 15 of those policyholders die.
	My other main gripe is with Sir John Chadwick. I do not mind telling you, Madam Deputy Speaker-although I will probably get into terrible trouble for saying this-that I have called for his resignation, such is my frustration with him and with his refusal to interact with the all-party group. I get very concerned when people who have been appointed by the Government, and who have such extraordinarily important roles to play and who are working on issues that affect so many of our constituents simply refuse to come to the House of Commons to interact with parliamentarians. We are trying to represent our constituents by trying to lobby Sir John. He has stated that we can write to him like anybody else-but that is simply not enough. As a democratically elected parliamentarian who represents 74,000 constituents, I demand to have the opportunity to call him before us and to engage with him. His approach shows great arrogance on his part, and I very much regret that.
	The other thing that I wish briefly to say is how disappointed I am with the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), who is no longer in his place. He intervened on the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) to say that tonight's vote would, of course, be on party lines. What a disappointment that is. The right hon. Gentleman must have Equitable Life policyholders in his constituency who have been affected by these events, and one would think that Labour MPs would, as happened in the Gurkha debate, show conviction by voting against the Labour party. I have voted against the Conservative party on one occasion-over the privatisation of Royal Mail-although it is difficult to vote against one's own party and it takes a great deal of courage. I might write about it in my memoirs-

Daniel Rogerson: A Tall Story?

Daniel Kawczynski: Indeed. As long as one is not rebelling against one's party all the time, the Whips realise-

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could face the Chair; it assists not just the occupant of the Chair, but the  Hansard writers.

Daniel Kawczynski: Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was just saying that it is very important, on occasion, to vote against one's party and to rebel.
	I shall end my contribution by saying that I received a letter from the Equitable members action group containing the response from one Labour MP. That MP, who is a member of the all-party group, had said, No way am I voting on this Lib Dem motion. This is just party politics by the Liberal Democrats and I am not prepared to support them. I disagree with that Labour Member. Although I am not a great fan of the Liberal Democrats, I believe that on this occasion they are raising something on one of their Opposition days that is of vital importance to our constituents. It is not politics on the part of the Liberal Democrats, because I feel just as passionately as they do about seeking justice for Equitable Life policyholders. I urge Labour Members to think about the ramifications here. If they are members of the all-party group, they should show respect to their decision to join the group and to their constituents, and they should remember that at the next general election, a lot of the policyholders will be voting on the basis of how their Member of Parliament votes tonight.

Julie Morgan: I am thankful for the opportunity to speak briefly in this debate. First, I pay tribute to the Cardiff and south Wales committee of EMAG. Many of my constituents in north Cardiff and the surrounding area are affected by the issues we have debated today. I have had meetings in the constituency with EMAG and have met many individual constituents on the issue, too. I am also a signatory to early-day motion 1423. Let me repeat that I know that we are not talking about wealthy, rich people. The people whom I have met are suffering because of what has happened to Equitable Life.
	My concerns relate partly to the position of the parliamentary ombudsman. I am a member of the Public Administration Committee, so I have been part of the process and a contributor to the reports that the Committee has produced. I support the comments ably made by the Chairman of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). I believe that it is very important to preserve and support the position of the ombudsman. My hon. Friend said that he considered this matter to be House business, although he did not think that the Whips would approve of that. I am thinking about it in the same sort of way. It is very important that we should support the ombudsman in her findings.
	I am also concerned about the decision as to who will be disproportionately affected-an issue that other hon. Members have mentioned-and the means test. I am very concerned about the situation. If someone has lost money through accepted maladministration, after we have removed the effects of the market and mismanagement by Equitable Life, should a means test apply in deciding what compensation should be paid to those members? I am concerned about what disproportionate effect means.
	I welcome the Government's decision to accept the court's ruling and extend the number of people who could be eligible for payment. However, I am also concerned that that might mean smaller payments. Could the disproportionate impact consideration be applied more stringently? I welcome the decision, but I am concerned about those implications, too.
	As a member of the Public Administration Committee and as someone who has signed the early-day motion and wants to support members of the scheme strongly in my constituency, I feel that I will be unable to support the Government this evening. I understand the dilemma for the Government about having to pay out large sums of money, but I have a duty to my constituents, as well as to the role that I have played on the Public Administration Committee, to follow that course of action.

Jeremy Browne: This has been a high-quality and important debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on kicking it off and setting exactly the right tone for the subsequent deliberations. All hon. Members who had the opportunity to participate-my hon. Friends the Members for Solihull (Lorely Burt) and for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) among them-spoke movingly about how these issues affect real people. It is easy to get wrapped up in the process and in which Committee said what about which report, but we should always remember that hundreds of people in each of our constituencies have had their quality of life materially affected by the matter that we are deliberating this afternoon. Others touched on the role of the ombudsman and the importance that we should all attach to upholding the integrity of that position. That point was made by the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan), but it was also made by the Chairman of the Committee on which she serves, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright).
	Several hon. Members talked about the incentive to save and how important that is, particularly as over the years ahead we will move to having a higher proportion of people beyond retirement age in relation to those who are of working age, and how we as a country must ensure that people are given the greatest possible incentive to save and how that incentive is undermined if people do not feel that they have confidence in the mechanisms that enable them to save. That point was made by the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton), who plays a prominent role in the all-party group, and by others. Some, like my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett), talked about the wider economic context, including incentives to save. Finally, the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) spoke-accurately, in my view-about how many savers saw Equitable Life as a gold standard institution. These were not people who put their savings in a place where they expected to take a high risk to achieve a high return; they were seeking to be responsible in quite a cautious way, so it is particularly unfortunate that they should find themselves in these circumstances.
	However, the one thing that I would say, respectfully, to the hon. Member for Angus is that I am not at all sure, were we to have independence in Scotland, that his constituents would be compensated any more speedily, if at all.

John Butterfill: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that many of those who took out Equitable Life policies did so in order that they would not be a burden on their families or the state in old age? That has been frustrated.

Jeremy Browne: I strongly agree, and that is why it is especially important that we consider seriously all the contributions made during the debate.
	In summary, I want to speak about three matters-the motion before us, the Government's pattern of behaviour over recent months and years, and how we might go forward. First, hon. Members who have not had the opportunity to study the motion in detail will see that it is almost word for word the same as early-day motion 1423. It has been updated to reflect developments with the addition of a small clause that does not materially affect the direction of the motion or, I hope, anybody's willingness to support it.
	Early-day motion 1423 was signed by 336 Members of this House. Given that Ministers on the whole do not sign such motions, that shows that a very high proportion of hon. Members felt able to sign this one. In addition, the total of signatories includes 113 Labour Members, many of whom have taken part in the debate. Therefore, I do not take the view expressed by some Labour MPs that this is a partisan, party political topic. The debate is about the integrity of the ombudsman and the material well-being of many hundreds of our constituents. I see it as an opportunity for MPs of all parties to follow through their convictions and vote for the motion.

Geraldine Smith: The costs are very important, as is the time scale involved. How much does the hon. Gentleman expect the proposal to cost, and according to what time scale does he see the money being spent?

Jeremy Browne: Those questions have been deliberated at length over the past three and a half hours, and I shall come to them in the third part of my speech, but I am currently dealing with the motion. My point is that it is a straightforward motion, tabled by the Liberal Democrats on one of our Supply days. I am delighted that every Conservative Treasury spokesman, and the party's Chief Whip, have put their names to it, but it is not a party-political motion. I see no reason why Labour MPs who are members of the cross-party committee, or who have signed the early-day motion, should have any difficulty in supporting it.
	My second point has to do with the conduct of the Government. For many of us, and for many of the people watching our proceedings either in person or on television, the way in which the Government have chosen to conduct themselves will have been a source of deep frustration.

Graham Stuart: We were asked a moment ago what the cost of the proposal would be, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that the cost to the country is the loss of dignity in old age for policyholders, and increased contempt for this place because of how the Government have behaved?

Jeremy Browne: The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a cost beyond the financial cost, but in his opening remarks the Chief Secretary to the Treasury-

Geraldine Smith: rose-

Jeremy Browne: I do not think that the hon. Lady was present to hear the Chief Secretary's opening remarks. She may have been, but she certainly missed large portions of the debate. He coined an unintentionally laughable word that reminded me slightly of when Hillary Clinton said that she misspoke when she was caught out saying something fundamentally untrue, or of when Janet Jackson suffered a wardrobe malfunction. It was an expression of that type. He said that he had under-celebrated the role of the ombudsman. That is one way of putting it.
	Let me tell the House what the ombudsman said about the Chief Secretary. She stated on 20 August, only two months ago, in a letter to the Chief Secretary:
	I noted what you said in the House on 21 July and did not recognise it as a true representation of my position. That said this is not the first time that the Government has misrepresented my position in order to defend its own and I suspect it will not be the last.
	I can see why the Chief Secretary is likely to under-celebrate her role, but it is part of a wider pattern.
	In her initial report, the ombudsman said that the Department of Trade and Industry oversight had been
	passive, reactive and complacent,
	and that Financial Services Authority regulation had been
	largely ineffective and often inappropriate.
	The Select Committee on Public Administration, which has been referred to on a number of occasions, described the Government's excuses as
	shabby, constitutionally dubious and procedurally improper.
	There has been a track record going back months-indeed, years-of the Government dragging their feet and behaving dishonourably.
	Even last year the Prime Minister promised that the next stage of the process would be completed by the end of 2008. That is the report to which we keep referring, which came in the middle of January 2009. One should be extremely cautious about accepting the timetables put forward by Ministers. The fact that the Chief Secretary stood before the House today and implied that policyholders should express gratitude for the swiftness of the Government's response compared with the other potential solutions on offer stretches credibility to the very limit.

Bill Wiggin: I have signed the hon. Gentleman's early-day motion and I shall support his motion. My constituents are grateful for the chance to get that on the record. Will the hon. Gentleman say something in his closing remarks about the role of Sir John Chadwick? I am afraid I disagreed with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). I think Sir John is a fantastic gentleman with a first-class mind.

Jeremy Browne: I would love to be able to comment on Sir John Chadwick in greater detail, but I have not had the opportunity to meet him. I suppose that was the point being made by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawezynski). Sir John should meet Members of Parliament. We were elected to represent our constituents and that would aid the process. I have no reason to doubt that he is an honourable person.
	In the last few minutes available to me, let me deal with the way forward. The Minister said that we should be looking at a timetable based on spring 2010. Some people will be worried that that is an elastic date. He was notably evasive when it came to offering a specific date when people could expect to see some payments made, not just further progress made. Even if that were spring 2010, hon. Members should remember that at current rates another 3,000 or so Equitable Life policyholders will have died between now and then.
	A policy process that does not recognise the acute needs of the individuals concerned will cause a huge amount of distress. There was no talk about interim payments. There was considerable concern about the expression disproportionate loss used by the Government. We need to make it clear that this is not some form of means-tested benefit, but recognition of the actual losses experienced by real policyholders.
	Everybody accepts that there was fault on the part of the people who ran Equitable Life. Of course market forces have an impact on the value of policies, but the ombudsman's report was concerned with the regulatory failure. The Government need to accept the ombudsman's report, give a straight response about a reasonable outcome and, most of all, reassure people across the country that speed is of the essence, that the Government understand their immediate human concerns, and that they will respond to those as a priority.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I thank all hon. Members for their comments during this informative debate. The continuing scrutiny of our position is an important part of our parliamentary process, and I welcome it. This has also been the first occasion for a debate since the judgment in the judicial review that was brought about by the Equitable members action group.
	First, I refer to a point that I think the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) made about the Government's failure to apologise. I do not know whether he noticed, but one of the first things that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury did was to reiterate the Government's apology. Certainly, when I took part in the Westminster Hall debate on 24 June, it was the first thing that I did. I am more than happy to reiterate, once again, on behalf of public bodies and successive Governments who were responsible for the regulation of Equitable Life between 1990 and 2001, the apology for the maladministration that they accept took place. That will be on the record once again.

Lindsay Hoyle: Does the Exchequer Secretary not feel that we are in danger of rehearsing the Gurkha escapade, whereby the Government give a little bit more, then a little bit more? Why can we not be up front and say, We are going to pay those people who have missed out on the Equitable Life situation and the compensation scheme at the earliest point possible? Then we can all be happy.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I do not know whether my hon. Friend has been listening to the debate, but one point on which the whole House agrees is that it is very important that we obtain a speedy resolution. We all have constituents who are affected, and I reiterate that we remain committed to achieving a speedy resolution.
	In the time available to me, I hope to cover as many as I can of the points raised by the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), who spoke for the Opposition; my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright); the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer); my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton); the hon. Members for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) and for North Cornwall; my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan); the hon. Members for Angus (Mr. Weir), for Solihull (Lorely Burt) and for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski); my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan); and the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne).
	I had better clarify matters up front, because there were some misconceptions about the scheme being up and running by spring 2010. The Chief Secretary said that there would be a scheme design by spring 2010, and we will move with all speed to set it up thereafter.
	On our relationship with the ombudsman, I reiterate that we still rebut any suggestion that there was anything improper, dubious or shabby about the manner of our engagement with the ombudsman. The Government have a great deal of respect for the ombudsman, but we also have a duty to consider the wider interests of the taxpayer.

Geraldine Smith: It is important that the Minister takes note of the ombudsman. However, it is equally important that we introduce a scheme as quickly as possible to help as many people as possible. No one has mentioned the financial cost, but that must be a consideration.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The ombudsman herself acknowledged that it was legitimate for us to take up the wider interests of the taxpayer and the issue of the public purse.
	Constitutional matters were raised. The constitutional balance that the legislation reached, on the one hand, permits the parliamentary ombudsman wide jurisdiction and powers of determination, as well as the ability to make far-reaching recommendations, but, on the other, permits a Government to reject findings and recommendations in certain circumstances. We did not depart lightly from the ombudsman's findings. After careful consideration of her report, we accepted some, but, where we believed that we had cogent reasons, we departed from others.
	The recent High Court ruling upheld a number of those departures, and others have gone unchallenged. The Court found that the Government did not have cogent reasons for some departures, and we have accepted those findings and amended Sir John Chadwick's terms of reference to include them. Sir John is confident that that additional scope will not impact on the time scale for resolving his work.
	At no time have we sought to delay matters. The ombudsman's report was the product of four years' work, and it raised a number of complex and difficult issues. None of the Government's actions has been motivated by anything other than the desire to achieve a fair resolution for policyholders and taxpayers alike. We continue to believe that this was, and is, the right approach.
	Some Members, including the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), suggested that the Court struck down our ex gratia scheme. That is not the case. It endorsed the Government's right to depart from the ombudsman's finding 3 and strongly rejected the challenge to the Government's decision to depart from her recommendation. That is not indicative of any lack of respect for the office of ombudsman or any disregard for the plight of policyholders affected by the events at Equitable Life.

Stephen Pound: May I assure my hon. Friend that many of us are desperate to vote for the Government's amendment and would happily do so if she could give us one piece of information: when will the payments be made?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The design of the scheme will be available by spring 2010, and we will move with all speed to get the payments made. The motion proposes the implementation of the ombudsman's recommendation for a scheme setting up a tribunal, which would mean that individual assessments took longer, and it would therefore take longer for the money to get through.

David Davis: rose-

John Barrett: rose-

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I cannot give way; I have only four minutes left.
	I want to correct another assertion. The hon. Members for Solihull and for Edinburgh, West said that our original proposed payment scheme left 90 per cent. of policyholders without help. I do not recognise that figure, and I have seen no data to back it up. We have not analysed the policyholder data so we do not know exactly how many people are included. However, following our decision to include the findings previously not accepted by the Government, the period of injustice accepted goes back to the period covered by the ombudsman's report. Having considered the judgment of the Court, we think it right to accept its decision in relation to those findings. The key impact is that the terms of injustice accepted by the Government now extend from mid-1991 rather than mid-1995. One effect of that is that a large proportion of trapped annuitants now fall within the scope of the period of injustice accepted; many hon. Members have voiced concerns about that group. About half those people fell within the scope of the injustice findings originally accepted by the Government, and the Court has now determined that the Government's interpretation of injustice was unduly narrow with respect to certain findings. We have accepted the decision, with the effect that most trapped annuitants now fall within that scope. Sir John Chadwick commented that that would not have happened even if all the ombudsman's injustice findings had been accepted.
	Members heard my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary explain the Government's approach to resolving the Equitable Life issue, focusing on the scope of our ex gratia payment scheme, the speed with which we can act and the fairness of our approach. We are clear that speed is of the essence in bringing this matter to a close.
	Two points were raised on interim payments. We have asked Sir John to consider interim payments as part of the scheme. On payments to estates, that issue will be taken into account when deciding on the final terms of the payment scheme.
	Sir John Chadwick is making good progress, and it is clear that the continuing priority is for Sir John and the Government to get on with the work required to deliver this ex gratia payment scheme. He has already published a further interim report on his progress and has invited representations on it by 27 October. He has also committed to providing a further update before the end of the year. I note that members of the all-party group on Equitable Life policyholders are concerned that he has not yet managed to find time in his schedule to visit them. I think that his priority at the moment is to get on with designing the scheme. However, I will pass on the comments made by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, who will know that I visited the all-party group and spoke to its members. Not many were there, but what they lacked in quantity they made up for with the quality of their questioning.
	As my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary said, Sir John faces a complicated task. We expect him to finalise the design of the scheme by the spring, and we will move quickly to consider his advice and announce a payments scheme that is practical to deliver and fair to policyholders and to the taxpayer. That is what we all want. I have said before that I cannot see how it would bring anything but further delay to accept the ombudsman's recommendations for a tribunal and a case-by-case individual examination. The amendment in the name of the Prime Minister urges an ex gratia scheme that is administratively quicker and simpler to deliver than that envisaged by the ombudsman, and that must be in the interests of policyholders. I therefore urge the House to reject the motion and support the amendment.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
	 The House divided: Ayes 269, Noes 294.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the proposed words be there added.
	 Question agreed to.
	 Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House notes that the Parliamentary Ombudsman has taken the unusual step of using powers under the 1967 Act to present Parliament with a further and final report on Equitable Life; also notes the Public Administration Select Committee's Sixth Report  Justice denied? The Government's response to the Ombudsman's report on Equitable Life; recognises the vital role the Ombudsman plays in public life; reaffirms the duty of Parliament to support the office of the Ombudsman; recognises the Government's determination to introduce an ex gratia payment scheme that is administratively quicker and simpler to deliver than that envisaged by the Ombudsman; further welcomes the Government's decision announced to the House on 20 October 2009 to widen the ex gratia payment scheme to include trapped annuitants who took out policies after mid-1991; urges Sir John Chadwick to report as quickly and expeditiously as possible; and recognises the impact and significant distress that maladministration and injustice have caused in respect of Equitable Life.

Climate Change (Political Response)

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. Before I call the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), I say to those who will speak from the Front Benches, as well as to those hoping to catch my eye from the Back Benches, that there is a very long list of applicants and relatively little time for their work to be completed. I ask, therefore, for restraint in the length of speeches and perhaps on the number of interventions. The Chair will use its powers to vary the time limit if that will help to ensure maximum participation in the debate.

Simon Hughes: I beg to move,
	That this House believes that it is vital that the UK demonstrates political leadership at all levels in response to the climate crisis, and that this is particularly important ahead of the United Nations Climate Change summit in Copenhagen if there is to be an international agreement which will avert the worst effects of catastrophic climate change; further believes that immediate practical responses to the crisis should include a massive expansion of renewable energy and energy efficiency and a commitment for all homes in Britain to be warm homes within 10 years; acknowledges that action taken now to tackle the climate crisis will cost less than action taken in the future; notes the declared support of Labour and Conservative frontbenchers to the objective of the 10:10 campaign which calls for 10 per cent. greenhouse gas emission reductions by the end of 2010; agrees that the House will sign up to the 10:10 campaign; calls on Her Majesty's Government and all public sector bodies now to make it their policy to achieve a 10 per cent. reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2010; and further calls on the Government to bring a delivery plan before this House by the end of 2009 on how these objectives will be achieved.
	We live in an age of crises, and in recent months the economic crisis has most dominated the commentary around the world, the concerns of the public and debates here. However, the global ecological and environmental crisis poses the greater challenge. In some ways happily, although very belatedly, it is now rising to the top of the domestic and international agendas. To put it in context, a UN report this year stated that 300,000 deaths a year are attributable to climate change, that 325 million people are seriously affected at a cost to the global economy of $125 billion a year, and that 4 billion people are vulnerable to climate impacts.

Rob Marris: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Simon Hughes: Not yet. I am trying to respect the Deputy Speaker's exhortation.
	Action on climate change clearly cannot wait any longer, which is why, all over the world, individuals, communities and Governments who have understood the message are taking action. Last week, I was in west Africa. People in Nigeria realise that the wasting of oil and flaring of gas cannot continue; people in Ghana are changing the way they grow their cocoa crops, so that they do not chop down trees as part of the farming process; and people in Sierra Leone understand that deforestation around Freetown cannot continue. More and more people are getting the message. Many people will have seen the film the other day of the extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet of the Government of Maldives to emphasise the threat to that low-lying country, and millions of citizens of more populous countries such as Bangladesh will be at risk if we do not change direction.
	Governments all over the world are now working hard-I commend them on that-to get a tough, fair and effective new international deal in a few weeks in Copenhagen, because, in spite of the warnings, for too long there has not been enough action. To put it bluntly, there has been too little action so far, and it has come too late. Many people are saying that the next five years-the lifetime of the next Parliament-is the period in which we will either avert the climate crisis or not.
	Today's debate, chosen by my colleagues and me, aims to put the climate crisis centre stage in Parliament and to turn our minds not just to the targets of 2020 or 2050, but to what can be done now.

Andrew Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Simon Hughes: I will give way to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) first, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me.
	Our motion sets out three major areas of political change that we believe are needed in Britain as a whole, as well as some specific things for us to do now. The three major areas are a massive expansion of renewable energy, a wholehearted commitment to energy efficiency and a commitment for all homes in Britain to be warm homes within the next 10 years.

Rob Marris: May I gently suggest to the hon. Gentleman and the House as a whole that a debate on the UK's political response to climate change on the Liberal Democrat motion-the Government amendment is hardly better-is monstrous, because the motion says nothing about adapting to climate change? As he has said, people are already dying from climate change. We need to take adaptation just as seriously as the mitigation of emissions.

Simon Hughes: I accept that. At our conference last month, we made it clear that the international agreement of the developed world to put money into the kitty to deal with adaptation and mitigation-the Prime Minister understands the agenda item- is just as important. The reason our motion is more focused is that there is a campaign in this country and around the world for action now and next year. We are trying to get the Government and Parliament to make decisions about this country. We are also continuing to exhort our Government to make the right decisions at Copenhagen.
	However, the motion adds to the three general propositions that I have set out for the next decade and calls on the Government and Parliament to sign up to the 10:10 campaign-if we pass the motion this evening, that is what we will do-and commit this country and this Parliament to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent. by the end of 2010. At the end of this debate, I shall ask colleagues from all parties to support the motion and reject the amendment. If we make the right decision today, we can bring great credibility to Parliament, we can do the right thing for the people whom we represent and, just as we did a few months ago when we decided to give proper recognition to the commitment and service of the Gurkhas, we can show that Parliament, not just the Government, can determine what the nation does.

Andrew Smith: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. In welcoming this opportunity to reaffirm our support for the 10:10 campaign, may I ask the hon. Gentleman why, in focusing his motion, he left out the groundbreaking Climate Change Act 2008, the importance of carbon budgeting and the contribution of local authorities? Surely all are vital to success in combating climate change.

Simon Hughes: If the right hon. Gentleman had seen the preparation for my speech, he would know that I will applaud the Government for the 2008 Act, as well as the work done in both Houses and by all parties to ensure that the 2008 Act was stronger than originally proposed. He would also know that I am clear that it is a good thing that Departments now have carbon budgets and that the role of local authorities is important.
	All those things are important, but the 10:10 campaign is not about those things. The 10:10 campaign is about asking individuals, organisations, companies, councils, the Government and Parliament to make a specific commitment to reduce our emissions by 10 per cent. between now and the end of next year-that is, 10 per cent. by the end of 2010. The campaign builds on the work that we have done, but it is because people believe that the long-term planning is not sufficient that we must now do those things that the right hon. Gentleman and I, as well as many others, no doubt already do in our personal lives and our communities.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Simon Hughes: I will take one more intervention in a second and then I will press on.
	We have worded the motion in the way that we have because we are talking not about a tomorrow problem, but about a today problem. Parliament has the authority to make decisions today that can change things from today in the days and months immediately ahead.

Mark Lazarowicz: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Like many in the House, I have personally signed up to the 10:10 campaign, but it is not clear from what he has said so far whether he is calling on Departments or the UK as a whole to cut emissions by 10 per cent. by the end of 2010. Indeed, can he give an indication of the pathway for achieving a 10 per cent. reduction in the country as a whole by 2010?

Simon Hughes: I can deal with both those questions, and the answer is yes. I am calling on the Government as a whole to sign up, which would involve all Departments and agencies of Government. The Department for Energy and Climate Change-the Minister's Department-has already signed up, and public sector organisations, such as the national health service, have also done so. The pathway is set out in the motion, which calls on the Government to come back with a programme for how this can be delivered by the end of this year. The Government would be committed to doing that, if the motion were passed. In that way, everyone would know how the Government believe that they can implement the plan. Bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England have made it clear that they can achieve more than a 10 per cent. reduction by the end of next year. This is not impossibilist politics; it is politics for now that would commit not only this Government but whoever is in government after the election to deliver in the months ahead.

Lembit �pik: Is my hon. Friend saying that the strength of the motion and the narrative that he is putting forward is that they seek to involve not only corporations but individuals, and that, as the Centre for Alternative Technology has pointed out, we can achieve this only by working together to create attitudinal and practical change in the way that we, as individuals, live? If we can do that, we can achieve this target. If we do not, we have no hope whatever of doing so.

Simon Hughes: That is absolutely correct. I had the privilege of being at the launch of the 10:10 campaign outside the old power station in my constituency that is now Tate Modern. This is a campaign in which ordinary people are saying that they want to do things in their communities. They are also now saying that they want Parliament and the Government to lead and to do the same. I would hazard a guess that, in the constituencies of all my friends-and, indeed, of every colleague in the House-there will be many individuals and organisations that will want us to be bold today, not timid, and to sign up to a campaign that many individuals have signed up to in recent weeks.

Joan Walley: We want to be bold in Stoke-on-Trent. We want to sign up to the 10:10 campaign, and it is vital that we work together right the way across Parliament and down to the people at grass-roots level. That is taken as read. May I point out to the hon. Gentleman, however, that it would have been helpful if his motion had mentioned the report that was delivered only last week to Parliament from the Committee on Climate Change, entitled Meeting carbon budgets-the need for a step change? It is vital that everything that is done on the 10:10 campaign should be done within the framework of the CCC.

Simon Hughes: Of course I accept what the hon. Lady says. She has a very good track record. I was present at the announcement of the report to Parliament, and I think that Ministers have already given an undertaking that it will be debated-it is bound to be debated. May I just point out to colleagues, however, that this motion is not meant to encompass every single thing that anyone could ever do, or everything that we should have done? It is designed to focus our attention on the demand that is being made of us to sign up now to a campaign that is gathering support daily around the country. If Parliament and the Government do not sign up to it, it will send a terrible message to other people. We will seem to be saying, You do the job, but we're not willing to follow.

Graham Stuart: The hon. Gentleman has rightly said that we need to be bold, not timid. Is not this therefore the time for the Liberal Democrats to show leadership and to accept the need for new nuclear power if we are to meet our green needs and our energy needs?

Simon Hughes: I could be distracted down that road, and I am very happy to have that debate. There is perfectly reasonable debate involving the argument that nuclear power should play a part in our energy mix, but I believe that it is flawed in a huge number of respects. For example, it is too expensive, it will be late and it is too risky. There are all sorts of reasons why it is not a good option, but the really important thing is that we can meet our energy needs without nuclear power. It is not necessary. The Government and the Conservatives, who are allied in their love of the nuclear industry, are wrong about that. My colleagues and I have held to that view over the years.
	This country has a particular responsibility in this regard, for three reasons. We have an historic responsibility because we were the country of the industrial revolution and we have contributed hugely to the amount of emissions on the planet. We also have a responsibility because we are a member of the European Union, which has many industrialised countries, and because we are a member of the Commonwealth, which stretches around the world. We must therefore achieve a really strong deal at Copenhagen; a weak deal will not be worth having. I applaud the Prime Minister and his colleagues for the fact that they are working hard to get a good deal at Copenhagen. We boast that we are a world leader, but we have to show that our deeds match our words.
	Here, sadly, we have not delivered the goods. We have had a Government target in every manifesto since 1997: one was a 20 per cent. reduction in emissions by 2010, for example, but we are barely halfway there. Emissions reductions through the recession do not count; we simply have not delivered. Another Government target was to have 10 per cent. of our electricity through renewables by 2010. We have the best potential source of renewables anywhere. I attended the British Wind Energy Association conference in Liverpool this morning, and I know that the number of people expressing an interest in renewable energy has gone up nearly 50 per cent. since last year alone. Yet where are we? Not at the top of the league table for renewables in Europe, like Sweden, but at the bottom with countries such as Luxembourg. The Minister told me earlier this year that only 1 per cent. of our homes are energy-efficient-we are the cold man of Europe. The Government now support the expansion of Heathrow-blind to the evidence of the need to reduce aviation emissions and still willing to have dirty coal produced in the future. Commitments to the environment have been broken again and again; sadly, we have not delivered.

Susan Kramer: In condemning the third runway and expansion at Heathrow, my hon. Friend anticipated my point, but does he agree that it is imperative that we hear from the Conservatives some condemnation of the Boris island estuary airport, which would be a climate change and environmental disaster on an even worse scale?

Simon Hughes: I say to my hon. Friend, who has led our work on this issue, that it always seemed to me entirely inconsistent for Conservative Members to say on the one hand that they are against expanding Heathrow while saying on the other hand that they are quite happy to have lots more activities in airports elsewhere in the south-east of England.  [Interruption.] That is not our policy-absolutely not. If Ministers, civil servants, fellow MPs, local government officers, councillors and all the people in public office used trains rather than planes in this country when they could do-and they set an example, which it is perfectly possible to do in mainland Britain-we would not need the sort of expansion that the Government are now supporting.
	We have been committed environmentalists since our Liberal Democrat party was formed in 1988, and many of us were committed even before that. Indeed, I remember flagging up the urgency of climate change in a debate with Mrs. Virginia Bottomley, who was the Minister with responsibility for the matter, in 1988. We argue that the policies must always follow the science. We argue that to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions-this is what the intergovernmental panel on climate change has said-global emissions must peak and decline no later than 2015. We are clear-this was also the point made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris)-that if we are going to have a sane world, the developed countries will have to give to the developing countries something in the order of £160 billion a year for adaptation and transition. We must continue to reduce our emissions rigorously over the next 10 years and then beyond. We will probably also have to phase out all fossil fuel by 2050.
	All that has a fantastic cost-benefit, which is an issue that many people do not understand. Emission cuts are cost saving. The argument that money spent now will be money saved later is becoming increasingly influential. The environmental argument is thus also an economic argument, and in straitened times it seems to me to be a very persuasive argument indeed.

Greg Mulholland: Does my hon. Friend share my frustration that the Government have not sufficiently linked those very arguments about people struggling to pay fuel bills in the recession with the need to tackle climate change? It is particularly disappointing that the Government are moving the goalposts on their targets for fuel poverty and saying that the targets will be in place only as long as it is practicable, which makes a nonsense of them altogether.

Simon Hughes: My hon. Friend is right, which is why we have said that one of the most useful things that we can do is have a plan to make every home a warm home. There is a win all round-warmer homes, fewer people dying, lower fuel bills and the climate saved. It is absolutely a winner, and it must be made central to policy.

David Chaytor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Simon Hughes: No. I really want to move to a conclusion now, as a huge number of colleagues want to contribute to the debate, which is as it should be. The Government spend £1.6 billion every year on energy. Lord Stern, probably the foremost climate economist in the world, has warned that if we do not take action, between 5 and 20 per cent. of global GDP will be lost due to the effects of climate change. To prevent that, we need to spend about 2 per cent. of global GDP. For every £2 spent now, we could save £5 to £20 in the future. The conclusions are obvious: we should take collective action together. What individuals and companies have done, Government and Parliament should now do too.
	Many councils, of all parties and those with no overall control, have signed up to the campaign. Among Liberal Democrat-run councils, colleagues in Camden and Cambridge, Eastleigh and Islington, Richmond and Newcastle, and my borough of Southwark, have signed up.  [ Interruption. ] My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter) adds Stockport, and there may be others, including councils run by other parties. Sadly, at City hall in London the other day, the Tories walked out when the motion was put, not allowing the motion to be voted on.
	Many organisations have signed up. The Prime Minister has said:
	I fully support the...campaign and its challenge for everyone to cut carbon emissions by 10 per cent. in 2010.
	The Department of Energy and Climate Change has said:
	The Government welcomes the...campaign.
	Nearly 30 per cent. of Labour Members, nearly 20 per cent. of Conservative Members, and half of Liberal Democrat Members have signed up personally.
	If we pass the motion, we can achieve things now. I shall end with a short shopping list: we can ensure that travel arrangements are energy-efficient; we can improve energy awareness and introduce energy efficiency measures throughout the Government estate, so that everyone understands the implications of what they do; and we can reduce heating. As advised by the Sustainable Development Commission among others, if we use renewables to power Government stock, we can save 1.8 billion tonnes of CO2 each year. In this place, we can turn off annunciators, televisions, lights and computers when they are not needed, and people can use the stairs rather than the lifts. We could have tap water rather than bottled war; we could do a phenomenal amount.
	In the past year, we have all probably made a little contribution. My orange taxi has stayed in its drive entirely, unmoved-I have cycled or used public transport. If individuals are willing to do that, I hope that Government will now do it, too. At the end of this debate, I hope that colleagues will send this message: low carbon is job creating, action now is cheaper than action later, and we can grasp the low-hanging fruit.
	For the Liberal Democrats, It's not possible, is not an answer. I remind Ministers of what the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change said to his party conference:
	It is the idealists and optimists that make change happen.
	We are idealists and optimists, but we are also political realists. There is no bigger crisis than climate change, and I hope the House and the Government will sign up to action this year-not next year, some time or never.

Joan Ruddock: I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from House to the end of the Question and add:
	welcomes the 10:10 campaign as a motivator of public action to cut carbon dioxide emissions through individual and collective behaviour change; recognises the value of such campaigns to build public support for action by governments to agree an ambitious, effective and fair deal at Copenhagen; further recognises the significant effort made by individuals and organisations to cut their emissions through the 10:10 campaign; supports the Climate Change Act introduced by this Government, the first such legislation in the world, and the system of carbon budgets that enables Britain to set itself on a low carbon pathway; notes that carbon budgets ensure active policies by Whitehall departments and the public sector that deliver long-term sustained emissions reductions not just in 2010 but through to 2022 and beyond; further supports the efforts of local councils to move towards local carbon budgets by signing up to the 10:10 campaign; further welcomes the allocation of up to £20 million for central Government departments to enable them to reduce further and faster carbon dioxide emissions from their operations, estate and transport; and further welcomes the cross-cutting Public Value Programme review of the low carbon potential of the public sector, which will focus on how the sector can achieve transformational financial savings through value-for-money carbon reductions.
	In the past few months, I have met Environment Ministers, Finance Ministers and negotiators from about 40 different countries. Everywhere I go, people acknowledge and praise the UK's global leadership on climate change. So let no one be in any doubt: this Government are making a huge and concerted effort to bring about success in Copenhagen. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for acknowledging that.
	Our embassies around the world are engaged in outreach on the issue. Our experts are helping in many countries. Our officials are at every negotiating table. The Prime Minister and Cabinet colleagues are actively contributing to the process, and the Prime Minister has indicated that if it is necessary to secure agreement, he will go in person to achieve it. We have actively pursued ambition within the EU, arguing for a 30 per cent. conditional offer when others thought the recession an excuse for lowering targets. We have held fast to the science, arguing that any deal must put the world on track to keep global average temperature rises within 2° C. We have intervened with proposals to unblock the inevitable logjams that occur in a process that takes two years.

Graham Stuart: Britain has indeed taken a leading role in international negotiations, and I know that our embassies are involved in that, but may I put it to the Minister that our performance at home is woeful in comparison with our efforts on the international stage? How is it possible for us to show any form of global leadership given our own record on energy efficiency and our failure to implement carbon capture and storage? There are so many low-hanging fruit in which I know the Minister has been personally interested in past years. Why have the Government failed to deliver at home while talking so loudly abroad?

Joan Ruddock: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is referring to Tory councils. I will come to the Government's record, which I assure him stands up very well when we are abroad.
	Let me explain what we are aiming for at Copenhagen. We want a deal that is ambitious, effective and fair. We need action by all countries, and if we are to help developing countries move from the high-carbon path to low-carbon and climate-resilient growth, we shall need action in a number of areas including finance, technology, deforestation, adaptation and institutional reform. On 26 June this year, the Prime Minister set out the United Kingdom's position on global climate finance: the aim is to raise around $100 billion each year by 2020. The Prime Minister was the first world leader to do so, and it has paid dividends.

Peter Ainsworth: The Minister has failed to answer the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart). While dealing with the issue of energy efficiency, will she tell us what is the energy efficiency rating of her Department's headquarters?

Joan Ruddock: I am happy to answer the hon. Gentleman's specific question. I shall deal with the general issues that he raised later in my speech. The rating of our Department-we inherited the listed building-is the lowest possible, but we are taking considerable measures to change that. I assure the hon. Gentleman that our expectation is that the next time we are given an energy efficiency rating, it will not be G.
	Let me tell the House about the finance initiative, which is an essential part of the Copenhagen discussions. As I have said, it has paid dividends. Climate finance is now being properly discussed in the new negotiations forums such as the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate-for instance, in London earlier this week-and the G8 and the G20, and they are using the broad framework that the Prime Minister set out in his speech.
	We are continuing to push for ambition within the European Union so that we can take a strong position at Copenhagen. We have taken a leading role in the way in which we identify sources of finance needed to support a deal and the institutional architecture needed to deliver it, thinking creatively about how we can best facilitate the rapid deployment and development of low-carbon technology, and leading work to agree on a new international framework to tackle deforestation. We are also continuing to push our objectives with other Governments, with the Secretary of State visiting China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States in pursuit of a deal.

Andrew Murrison: Does the Minister accept that not all sustainable technologies are equal? Does she agree that when we come to subsidise and support various forms of technology, we need to be discriminating if we are to maximise our impact? In particular, will she look again at onshore wind, which is causing a lot of grief to many of our constituents? Offshore wind, which has far more of a proven track record, is more likely to make a real contribution to our commitments.

Joan Ruddock: I intend to deal with those aspects of the Government's policy in due course. I wanted to put the House in the picture on Copenhagen first, because that is our absolute priority at present.

Dari Taylor: I have no problem with what the Government are doing. It is focused and it is delivering, and the 10:10 campaign is excellent. However, will my hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the major contributors to carbon dioxide emission is the growth of animal feed? Will she also acknowledge that using the renewable transport fuel obligation methodology generates a carbon saving of 70 per cent. in comparison with use of fossil fuel? That rises to more than 100 per cent.-

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I did say to the House that a lot of interventions would do terrible damage to the number of people who could be called in the debate. Interventions must be very short. I honestly think that the Minister has got the point that her hon. Friend has been trying to make.

Joan Ruddock: Let me assure my hon. Friend that, in looking across the whole of the economy, we are also of course looking to agriculture to make its contribution. We will take on board the points she has made.

Rob Marris: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Joan Ruddock: Yes, but I will have to respond to Mr. Deputy Speaker's comments shortly.

Rob Marris: I am grateful for what the Government have done, but I am bitterly disappointed, although unsurprised, that their amendment says nothing about adaptation. Can my hon. Friend explain why until the recent world recession CO2 emissions per capita in the United Kingdom had increased during this century?

Joan Ruddock: I will go on to explain that our emissions have reduced in terms of the economy as a whole. That is what is critical in these talks. My hon. Friend knows very well both about my commitment to adaptation in this country and overseas and the fact that the Government have got a framework for adapting to climate change for this country, which is very comprehensive and on which work is continuously done.

Jo Swinson: rose-

Don Foster: rose-

Joan Ruddock: I will not give way now, as I wish to make some progress.
	When we go abroad and urge other nations to be more ambitious and to do more, we do so in confidence because we know this country has already stepped up to the mark. The UK commitment to unilateral cuts of 34 per cent. in our greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and raising the target in the event of an agreement at Copenhagen meets the level of ambition required of developed countries by the United Nations framework convention on climate change. I remind the House that our Climate Change Act 2008 has made us the first country in the world to introduce legally binding targets to limit our greenhouse gas emissions and we are the only country to have a whole economy subject to carbon constraints through carbon budgets. In producing those budgets, we have taken the advice of the independent Committee on Climate Change.

Don Foster: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and may I add to the praise that has already been heaped on her for her personal contribution in this field? However, many of us are surprised that she has allowed her name to appear on this amendment, in view of what she has just said. Can she explain why the amendment praises everybody else for signing up to the 10:10 campaign, and yet it refuses to allow this House to join in with it?

Joan Ruddock: If the hon. Gentleman is a little patient, I shall come to that.
	No country has done more. I remind the House again that we will meet our Kyoto commitment by almost twice the amount required. Since 1990, greenhouse gas emissions in the UK have reduced by 18 per cent., or 21 per cent. if we add in the reductions made through the European Union emissions trading scheme, but we are in no way complacent. We know that action is required at all levels, which is why we applaud the efforts of the 10:10 campaign and encourage greater ambition and getting ordinary people involved. We also agree with 10:10 that the public sector must lead, and have put in place a raft of mechanisms to make that happen. The Liberal Democrat motion calls for all the public sector to reduce its emissions by 10 per cent. in 2010 and for the Government to produce a delivery plan by the end of this year. I regret to say that that is typical Liberal Democrat posturing. Only a party that never expects to be in government could propose a motion for a totally uncosted, unthought-through programme for a single year cut, as opposed to the sustained actions already under way to meet our carbon budgets-carbon budgets that are designed to deliver three times as much, and that were proposed by us in Committee on 18 May and agreed by the Liberal Democrats.

John Gummer: I have never been slow to support the Government when they have done the right things, but surely the Minister must accept that on every single count the Government fail in these areas. Let me give her just one example. The building schools programme has no rules that enforce green building. Indeed, local councils have to choose between building either a school that is big enough or green enough. How on earth does she defend the policy?

Joan Ruddock: I shared some of the right hon. Gentleman's criticisms of that programme in the past, but it has been changed. There is now much more concentration on the greening of schools, and many schools have taken on renewable technologies.

Martin Horwood: I slightly regret the tone of the statements that the Minister has just made, because she is casting doubt on the Government's ability to sign up to the 10:10 campaign. Given that her Department, the Department for International Development and some British embassies have signed up to it, precisely what excuses are being given to her by other Departments for not doing so?

Joan Ruddock: I intend to explain things, and I just ask all hon. Members to be patient until I get through the next points that I wish to make.
	I have referred to the carbon budgets. I suggest also that perhaps the Liberal Democrats are not really aware that the public sector reduced its emissions by one third between 1990 and 2007. Within government we take our responsibilities seriously and we are taking steps to put in place a strong internal mechanism to manage carbon budgets across Whitehall. In the transition plan to a low-carbon economy, we announced individual carbon budgets for all major Departments, representing their share of responsibility. All Departments will publish a carbon-reduction delivery plan by next April, which will include the indicators and milestones to monitor progress. All Departments will be committed to a long-term reduction in carbon emissions-that is a reduction not just in 2009 or in 2010, but through to 2022 and beyond. The Government are already on track to meet and exceed their carbon emissions target-I ask hon. Members to listen to this-of 12.5 per cent. reductions across their estate by 2010-11. We have already put that in place and we are already on track.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Joan Ruddock: I give way to the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson).

Jo Swinson: I thank the Minister for giving way to me at last; it just shows that it pays to persevere. I praise the work that she has personally done on tackling climate change, but does she not recognise that it is strange to praise the 10:10 campaign while refusing in the amendment to sign up Departments and, indeed, this House, to it? This House is not covered by the Government numbers that she just mentioned and it should have the opportunity to sign up to the 10:10 campaign. Today's Liberal Democrat motion is a way of doing that.

Joan Ruddock: Regrettably, the hon. Lady has not been listening to what I have said. I have been making it very clear what is already under way and why signing up to the 10:10 campaign does not make sense-[Hon. Members: This House.] This House can choose to do what this House wants to do, but the Government are clearly not committing the public sector as a whole-this is what the motion seeks-to the 10:10 campaign.
	The Government are giving direct assistance through providing £54.5 million in this financial year for a public sector loans scheme, which is administered by Salix Finance. That provides interest-free loans for energy efficiency technologies that provide payback in less than five years, with ongoing savings then staying in the public sector. The Carbon Trust provides detailed support for the public sector, running a carbon management programme that enables many public sector bodies to identify savings of 25 per cent. over a five-year period. I am pleased to announce today that we are allocating £20 million to cut CO2 emissions from both the Government estate and its transport. Some of the money will go on energy efficiency, on smart meters and on low-carbon cars, and some will go on mapping the possibilities of renewable energy on public land-that will be led by the Forestry Commission.
	All that effort, and much more, is the result of years of planning and experience. Consequently, I must say to the hon. Lady that it would make no sense to require the whole public sector to commit to a one-off emissions reduction when it is already demonstrating commitment in the short, medium and long-term. For some in the public sector a 10 per cent. reduction might be possible in a single year, and I congratulate those councils that have signed up to the campaign. I am pleased to say that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is ahead of 10:10. It has signed up to, and is on course to meet, a 10 per cent. cut in energy use in our building within this financial year.
	For individuals, I understand that the 10:10 campaign is aspirational, designed to give people a target to aim for voluntarily. As such, it is warmly welcomed by Government and it is consistent with our approach to the Act on CO2 campaign. Like 10:10, we seek to encourage and help people to change their behaviour. With 42 per cent. of emissions down to our personal lifestyles, we can do much to match efforts in Government, business and industry. Since we launched our carbon calculator two years ago, more than 1.6 million people have visited the site. I welcome the involvement of 10:10 and we are keen to help them with our own resources. To demonstrate our support, not only DECC Ministers but the whole Cabinet have signed up to make a personal contribution.
	Let me return to the bigger picture.

Simon Hughes: Does the Minister not accept that it sounds to everybody else who is being encouraged to sign up to the campaign as if the Government are inconsistent and not fully committed? If one or two Departments are signed up and so are bodies such as the NHS, but the Government cannot take collective responsibility, how can the Government-and Ministers-turn to the captains of industry, the leaders of the trade unions and local authorities and say with authority, We want you to do it but we just cannot do it ourselves?

Joan Ruddock: I remind the hon. Gentleman that his party signed up to the carbon budgets-

Simon Hughes: It is not either/or.

Joan Ruddock: It is. The carbon budgets are the result of years of effort. If a Department-or the whole public sector-were to try to put in place a 10 per cent. cut within a single year, I can assure him that projects would be absolutely useless. They would not come to fruition and that there would be chaos in planning. What would be the cost? If the Conservative party intends to support the Lib Dem motion, I hope that its spokesman will tell us what the cost would be of putting the whole public sector through that process in a single year instead of over the period of the carbon budgets to which he also signed up.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Joan Ruddock: I need to reach some further points and to explain- [ Interruption. ] I have not rubbished 10:10. It is a very worthwhile campaign, but 10:10 has not approached us with this proposition for the whole public sector.
	All sectors of the economy will have to contribute to the decarbonisation process required by the carbon budgets. We will need to change the way we do everything to cut down the amount of energy and other resources that we use. For example, by 2020 about 40 per cent. of our electricity will come from low-carbon sources-renewables, nuclear and clean coal-whereas 7 million homes will have had the opportunity to undertake whole house changes and more than 1.5 million households will be supported in the production of their own clean energy. The average new car will emit 40 per cent. less carbon than now.
	We need to transform our electricity system so that our electricity comes from clean sources. We have done an enormous amount to make that possible in recent times. We plan to achieve an almost sevenfold increase in the use of renewable energy in just 11 years. To achieve that, we are expanding and extending the renewables obligation and introducing a new feed-in tariff to support micro and small-scale renewable energy projects. The inclusion of nuclear power in our generation mix can also contribute and we are therefore taking steps to ensure that unnecessary barriers to its deployment are removed. It will be for energy companies to fund, develop and build nuclear power stations, and that will include meeting the full costs of decommissioning and accepting their full share of waste management and disposal. Clean coal is another plank of our future low-carbon energy plans and, again, we are putting significant financial support into carbon capture and storage.
	At the household level, we have already helped millions of families to save money, energy and carbon through our flagship scheme, the carbon emissions reductions target. Since 2002, the energy suppliers have spent billions of pounds on helping more than 5 million British householders deal with their energy efficiency needs. We expect that figure to exceed 9 million in 2011. That is proper, responsible planning and achievement.
	We have also introduced a new community energy saving programme, and around £350 million will be spent on energy efficiency measures in some of the most deprived communities in the UK. Next year, we begin the roll-out of smart meters to every household in the country.
	Beyond 2012, we know that there will be a need to go further. That is why we will have to introduce measures such as side wall insulation, microgeneration and new heating technologies. Such measures come at a high price, which is why we are piloting a new finance approach through the Pay As You Save pilots, which will help people take out loans that they can pay back from their energy bill savings.
	I want to touch on transport for a second, as it is currently the second-largest contributor of carbon emissions in the UK. Our transition plan makes it clear that ultra-low emissions vehicles, including electric vehicles, will contribute to greater efficiency in carbon savings in the future. The Government have pledged £230 million for consumer incentive packages from 2011 to promote the early adoption of ultra-low carbon vehicles, and an additional £30 million for the installation of electric vehicle infrastructure.
	Combined, these measures add up to the most ambitious transformation of the economy ever put forward by a British Government, and I defy either Opposition party to quarrel with that. Through a mixture of incentives, regulation and public spending, we are confident that we can move this country to a low-carbon path.
	As we embrace a greener future, however, we also accept our historic responsibilities for our part in causing climate change. That is why we will continue to do our utmost to achieve agreement at Copenhagen. This is the most important negotiation that the world has ever known. Nothing should deflect us from that task, and no political posturing should be deployed to diminish public support for our ambition.

Gregory Barker: I begin by congratulating the Liberals on calling this Opposition day debate. It is not a catch-all debate on climate change, and because we are relatively short of time, I shall try to keep my remarks brief. The agenda is huge and we will not have time to cover all of it, so I shall focus on the 10:10 campaign.
	It is rapidly becoming clear that it is nearly impossible to overstate the challenges posed by meeting and finding solutions to the problems of dangerous man-made climate change. Any opportunity for this Chamber to discuss that, and its profound effects, should be warmly welcomed.
	Over the summer recess, we learned that Arctic summer ice will have disappeared completely, not by 2050 as we had previously thought, but possibly as soon as within 20 years. We can all agree that there is now widespread agreement about the nature and scale of the threat posed by climate change. Before I move on, I shall give the House one more fact: it is estimated that if the Himalayan glaciers were to melt, three-quarters of a billion people would be without sufficient water. We cannot pretend that that would not have serious consequences for all of us in terms of global conflict, mass movements of people and our national security.

Rob Marris: What about adaptation?

Gregory Barker: There often seems to be a healthy consensus in UK politics on climate change, even if we do not talk enough about adaptation. Over the past few years we in the UK are fortunate enough to have enjoyed a good consensus, by and large, about the challenges and threats posed. We worked constructively with the Government across party on the Climate Change Act 2008. It is to the Government's credit that that is on the statute book, and we look forward to strengthening and improving any new legislation on climate that is included in this autumn's Queen's Speech.
	However, a broad consensus over the direction of travel and the nature of the challenge should not be mistaken for a sense of job done in respect of Britain's political and economic response. A commitment to a framework of reductions is only a small first step. As the Government have demonstrated by their failure to meet their manifesto pledges to reduce emissions targets, frameworks and targets on their own are not enough unless there is a plan for delivery behind them. What we have learned from the Minister today is that for Labour, energy efficiency is a fourth-term issue.

Bill Wiggin: On Government targets, it was the Minister who said that every new job should be a green job. That was in March this year. That same month, the Prime Minister promised 400,000 new green jobs, but at the Labour party conference that figure fell to 250,000. Is there any reason why the Government should have axed 150,000 jobs?

Gregory Barker: No real reason, except that those figures were plucked out of green air. Leadership means taking responsibility to deliver clear outcomes. On an issue of such severity, waiting and waiting is no longer an option.

Barry Gardiner: The hon. Gentleman spoke of the necessity for frameworks, which he has supported. I welcome that, but does he agree that having established the framework, having got the Climate Change Committee to make its recommendations, and having drawn up for Government a programme to enact those recommendations, it does not make sense to do something else and ask the Government to sign up to 10:10, which will conflict with the programmatic framework that the hon. Gentleman welcomed?

Gregory Barker: The most important thing about the 10:10 campaign is that it instils a sense of urgency into the agenda which is singularly lacking in the Government. They seem to take comfort from frameworks, regulation, long-term targets and the never-never land of 2020-when they will be long gone-believing that that justifies their inaction now. We must focus on what can be done.

Peter Ainsworth: Was not one of the most telling remarks made by the Minister in her contribution, when criticising the motion, that signing up to the 10:10 deal would cost a huge amount of money? She implied criticism of our Front-Bench team for not having costed that. This is not about cost. Does my hon. Friend agree that we are talking about saving energy, saving CO2 and saving money, not spending it?

Gregory Barker: Indeed. Labour just doesn't get it. The Government still have an old-fashioned backward-looking 20th century approach. They think that the environment costs, and must be paid for, whereas people in the 21st century understand that progressive and globally competitive economies must be energy-efficient. That is not an optional add-on. Whether energy efficiency is financed in the public sector, in the private sector or by consumers, more and more energy-efficient models are self-financing. The Minister should be aware that despite the credit crunch, there is a great deal of innovative financing out there now which is coming to the fore and which demonstrates that it does not need a big up-front spend from the taxpayer. We need to show political leadership that puts that on the agenda. To retreat into carbon budgets as though they were some universal panacea is claptrap. What we need is real progress now.

Malcolm Bruce: The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point. Is not Labour looking for excuses not to support the motion? If the Government had so much in place there would be no difficulty in delivering a 10 per cent. reduction next year, because the mechanisms would already be there. Why will the Government not allow the House to decide that it wants to sign up to that? If anybody wants to vote for that-

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman should not attempt to put too much in an intervention, especially if he is hoping to catch my eye later.

Gregory Barker: I thoroughly agree with the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce). The trouble with this Government is that they are stuck in a rut. Their default mechanism is, Don't support an Opposition motion. It just goes against the tribal instinct. However, I am sure that the Minister's common sense argues in the other direction, and that she did her bit to try to support the motion, but unfortunately was not successful.

Joan Ruddock: I would not have argued in any way for the motion. The situation is very clear to us: we have a programme that was laid out in detail in the transition plan this summer and covers the next decade. It includes the spending that we need to achieve and the policies that we have to put in place. We are talking about spending billions of pounds to achieve those policies, so it would be nonsense to try to turn that around for a gesture-for a single year-when we have a programme that runs to 2020.

Gregory Barker: The Minister has to understand that nobody-certainly nobody in this House who sits on the Opposition Benches-has the slightest confidence in any Government plan. They have been shown to fail in the past; they will fail in the future.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Gregory Barker: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart).

Graham Stuart: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, not only will the 2010 target on emissions be missed, but the child poverty target will be missed, too. Again and again, Government Members sit on their Benches in righteous indignation because they have laid out a plan. It is not the plan we want, it is delivery-and it is delivery that we have never received.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) seems to be whipping up interventions, but I say to the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart), who just intervened, that there is a saying, Never do anything twice, and three times is getting a little excessive in this debate.

Gregory Barker: I shall endeavour to make some progress, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Gregory Barker: I shall take an intervention from the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck).

Karen Buck: The 10:10 campaign has enormous strength, and is not its beauty due to the fact that it is a genuinely bottom-up campaign about changing the behaviour of individuals and organisations, and getting mass buy-in? Will the hon. Gentleman therefore say why he has not instructed all Conservative councils to sign up to it, or ensured that all Conservative-led local authorities and partner delivery organisations actively support it?

Gregory Barker: For a start, we do not instruct our councils to do anything. We certainly encourage them, and we will try to show some leadership. We certainly do not anticipate-

Hugh Bayley: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Gregory Barker: Would the hon. Gentleman mind if I finished my response to the previous intervention first?
	We certainly do not anticipate a new layer of bureaucracy. The 10:10 campaign is a public campaign that will not give rise to new regulation or bureaucracy. However, we exhort the whole public sector to participate in it.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Gregory Barker: I shall try to make some progress now, but I shall try to take Members' interventions a little later.
	How would I sum up the situation? There is a huge gap between ambition, practical vision and delivery on the ground, and there is a woeful mismatch between the debate in the UK about the political response to climate change so far and what has happened in the past. The bottom line is that the Conservatives have had enough of well-meaning but unambitious small-scale tinkering with the energy markets; we have had enough of complicated overlapping initiatives and regulation that would leave would-be entrepreneurs and investors in our green economy scratching their heads; we have had enough of sham green taxation that raised money for the Treasury without any clear green outcome-and we have had enough of a Government who could not make up their mind on coal or carbon capture and storage, had to be forced into feed-in tariffs and have no real strategy on heat and energy efficiency.
	Our low-carbon economy paper brings together all those elements in a coherent and ambitious strategy. It is a route to a transformation of the UK. It is not a wish list of targets and frameworks with no delivery; it is a plan for action which will be at the heart of the next Conservative manifesto.

David Chaytor: The motion requires
	all public sector bodies...to make it their policy to achieve a 10 per cent. reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
	by next year. Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House how many Tory councils have already signed up to the climate change indicator in the comprehensive performance assessment, and how many Tory councils have mechanisms in place even to measure their emissions, let alone to cut them by 10 per cent. in one year?

Gregory Barker: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a figure off the top of my head, but I can tell him that Conservative councils are by far the most efficient in the country and will certainly be looking to save money. People have to understand that that is what the energy efficiency debate is about. It is not about the environment or about saving money, but about both-it is two sides of the same coin.
	I have absolutely no doubt that the more Conservative councils come to understand the benefits of ambitious energy efficiency, the more they will be adopting such a strategy. There are certainly a lot more councils still to sign up. The 10:10 campaign was not launched in one go-it has been a viral campaign, and it is steadily growing. It started primarily with Liberal councils, but it is spreading, and I hope that more Conservative councils will take part. Where there are doubts about their ability to meet the targets, I will join in trying to persuade, educate and encourage them about how much of a money-saving strategy this could be. That includes my own local councils. Across the board, there are people who need to understand how beneficial this could be, as well as being the right thing to do.

Simon Hughes: Many people will be encouraged by what the hon. Gentleman has said. As his party is supporting the motion, will he encourage his colleagues around the country to support this initiative, wherever it comes from, particularly in places such as the Isle of Wight, which sadly, under Tory control, has acted as a barrier to wind turbines, indirectly resulting in Vestas closing down its plant and not producing them any more?

Gregory Barker: I think that Vestas closing down plant in the UK has less to do with the micro-politics of the Isle of Wight and a lot more to do with a total absence of leadership at national level after 10 years of a Labour Government.
	If we are to show global leadership, it will be through our actions and their results, not through international grandstanding. That message was reinforced this morning when I met the high-level delegation from China who are en route to this weekend's GLOBE International meeting at Copenhagen. They made it absolutely plain that they, pragmatically, set far more store by short-term actions than long-term targets. The two are not mutually exclusive, but one can certainly see their point. We must deliver emissions reductions at home to have any sort of global authority.
	In the run-up to Copenhagen, it is becoming clear just how much the Government's failure significantly to reduce emissions over the past 11 years is costing our credibility. As the Minister admitted, the DECC has the lowest possible rating for a Government Department, but unfortunately one would think from her comments that that was an aberration-that along the rest of Whitehall there were great beacons of energy efficiency and this was just one little period building. In fact, according to the Sustainable Development Commission, of the central Government and non-governmental public body estate, approximately 85 per cent. of buildings that even displayed an energy certificate were rated D or below and 59 per cent. were rated E or below. That is absolutely shocking. There can be no special excuses. Are we to expect the DECC to go round and occupy every single Ministry over the next 10 years as the only way to achieve delivery?
	The whole Government estate has an energy bill of approximately £4 billion a year, so a huge amount of taxpayers' money is unnecessarily wasted on electricity and energy bills. Yet we have had to wait until the fag end of a third-term Labour Government before they have begun to get even vaguely serious about energy efficiency. That is why Governments such as China's are not taking this Government as seriously as they should. The failure is compounded by missed opportunities. Energy security, green jobs, the huge economic opportunity of leading in new technologies, and a higher quality of life: all those are on offer, but to galvanise the private sector into taking advantage of such opportunities we require clear Government leadership.

Hugh Bayley: I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the fact that the House of Commons Commission, which is responsible for the carbon emissions from this building, considered this very matter at a meeting earlier this week. The minutes say:
	The Commission agreed that it could not sign up to the 10:10 campaign, but would explain that it planned to set meaningful and deliverable targets for 2010/11.
	Did the Conservative members of the Commission support its decision; if not, what did they say?

Gregory Barker: I do not know, but I would not mind laying a decent bet that there was a Labour majority, probably of former Ministers, imbued with a sense of targets.

Hugh Bayley: There is not a Labour majority; the Commission is a cross-party body chaired by Mr. Speaker.

Gregory Barker: I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that although it may be cross-party, there is still a Labour majority.

Hugh Bayley: No, there is not a Labour majority.

Gregory Barker: I am not going to get dragged into that, but it is unfortunate if the House has turned down an opportunity to join the campaign. I keep coming back to the fact that people want to see action, not yet more targets and budgets. They simply will not understand why things that can be done now are not being done, or why Ministers or their apologists are seeking some sort of safe refuge in future action at some unspecified date, or in further budgets and targets.

Oliver Heald: Does my hon. Friend agree that if firm, practical action along the lines of 10:10 were taken in this country, the effect would be to send out a message ahead of Copenhagen that this is not going to be yet another occasion that is all about warm words and signing up to something vague and meaningless, but that it will be an occasion when the world means business and something really has to change?

Gregory Barker: Absolutely. We need action, not words, and when better than in such serious economic times as these to put efficiency and money saving hand in hand, right at the top of the agenda? Only an old-fashioned, backward-looking mentality is preventing that.

Colin Challen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Gregory Barker: I will, but then I will try to make some progress. I had expected this to be the usual genteel outing, but I am glad to see the House so full.

Colin Challen: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I apologise to the House for intervening, but I have something on my chest. Last week the Climate Change Committee's first annual report to Parliament, containing many recommendations, was published. He does not have to wait until next year to respond to it. Will he say now whether a future Conservative Government will accept all its recommendations?

Gregory Barker: I certainly cannot do that, and I have to plead guilty: I have not read all the report. Even if I felt that I could accept all the recommendations, I fear that that would be way above my pay grade.
	We must consider whether we have been left behind on wind and solar energy and why we lag miserably on energy efficiency. We need to act now to ensure that we grasp the clear opportunities provided by offshore wind, carbon capture and storage, wave and tidal power and a host of other technologies. How much more British innovation will go abroad? How many times will we see such situations as the Pelamis wave energy convertor going to Portugal before the Government wake up to the damage that a lack of strong political leadership is doing to us, and the extent to which it is setting back this agenda?
	Having fixed our frameworks for emissions reductions in the Climate Change Act, we should focus entirely on delivering and executing our comprehensive and ambitious vision for a low-carbon Britain, all the way from local to international level. Of all the things that we need to do, energy efficiency is the lowest-hanging fruit; it is at the far end of the McKinsey curve. Industry and consumers are waking up to that fact, and we just need the Government to get on with the programme.
	As I mentioned earlier, many councils are still perplexed by the mixed messages and lack of leadership from central Government. That is why the 10:10 campaign has a job to do. If everybody were signed up and doing the necessary things, there would be no need for that sort of motivational campaign. The fact that there is still resistance is the reason why we need such a campaign.
	To give more local authorities, particularly smaller ones such as my own in Rother, the confidence that they will need to deliver on their targets, which are easy to sign up to but much harder to deliver, we need an ambitious roll-out of energy efficiency incentives, regulatory change and leadership from the centre to empower action in the community. Local authorities still encounter too many barriers to driving ahead as fast as they can. Better information on the latest technology and energy-saving best practice is needed, in an area that is changing all the time. There must be greater freedom to employ innovative financing schemes, particularly using energy service companies and new shared saving schemes that do not place the up-front costs of new technologies and retrofits on the taxpayer or on the overstretched budgets of local authorities.
	Certainly, those concerns have been expressed to me locally, and I shall be addressing them at my local energy efficiency summit- [ Interruption. ] I hear someone on the Government Benches asking how much those things will cost. They just do not get it. They have clearly never heard of shared savings models or ESCOs-energy service companies-and they clearly do not understand the appetite in the private sector to be part of this revolution, or the changes that are happening out there in the world. The world out there is changing and the Government do not seem to have woken up to the potential or the opportunity.

Rob Marris: I think the House will know what I am going to say. The world is changing out there: already from climate change we have floods, pestilence, and population movement. Are the hon. Gentleman and his party going to say anything about adaptation?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I say to the hon. Gentleman: please show restraint. We have 18 hon. Members who still want to speak, and we have not reached the main debate yet. Three interventions really is excessive.

Gregory Barker: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall try to bring my remarks to a close. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) makes a good and strong point. He is the champion of adaptation in the House, but I fear that, given the time constraints, this is not the debate in which to do that subject justice.
	The 10:10 campaign is just that-a campaign. It is a way to motivate and inform not only local communities and individuals, but the Government. We need the Government to show that they are actually part of the same community as we all live in. It is no good the individual members of the Cabinet signing up around the Cabinet table to take action in their personal lives; we need them sitting at the Cabinet table taking action in their public lives. The ridiculous tokenism of saying, Well, I'm doing something at home to change my gas boiler, when they sit in charge of departmental budgets of, in some cases, billions of pounds, or a woefully inadequate estate, such as that of the Department of Energy and Climate Change or all the other Departments put together, is just not good enough.
	We need Ministers to face up to their responsibilities and to realise that they do not have a monopoly on all the solutions or good ideas. They do not even have the confidence to embrace the new, interesting and exciting innovation out there. They really should join the rest of the world and support 10:10.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I realise that I am fighting a losing battle on this occasion. There are a great many hon. Members, with great credentials on this subject, who want to speak. We will start with the pre-announced limit of eight minutes on Back-Bench speeches, but after 6 o'clock it will be reduced to four minutes.

John Prescott: I have listened to many of these debates and had the privilege of being involved in the Kyoto negotiations in 1997, when Britain played the leading part in concluding the Kyoto agreement. It is quite wrong for the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) to be talking as if we have no direction and no delivery. I think he knows as much about this Government's delivery as he does about the recommendations of Committees of the House.
	The motion before us may concentrate on 10:10, but I will be fair to the Liberal party and say that it makes no basic criticism of the leadership internationally. That is not the case made by the Conservatives, who clearly say that we did not live up to our obligations, that we did not deliver and that we did not show leadership.
	May I instruct the hon. Gentleman a little bit on what the Government did to earn respect abroad? He is quite wrong to suggest that China is critical. I have met people globally, including the chief negotiator dealing with climate negotiations in Beijing last week. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the Chinese admire the leadership that has been shown by this country. The facts are clear, and people in government have to show that.
	We were the first country to achieve our Kyoto targets. We were one of only four countries that did so out of the 15 that negotiated at Kyoto, and we did so ahead of the Kyoto timetable. That is showing leadership.

Gregory Barker: Before the right hon. Gentleman gets too carried away, can we just remember that the only reason why the Government will meet their Kyoto targets is the dash for gas in the 1990s? Without that, they would be nowhere near meeting them.

John Prescott: Again, the hon. Gentleman shows his ignorance. Let me tell him this: presumably, there was some leadership to achieve the targets and bring things together. Only four countries in Europe actually achieved the Kyoto target, so we must have been all right on delivery. We were the first to want to talk about carbon trading, which Europe then took over from us. We were the first ones to bring in most of the changes well before anyone else was involved. To that extent, we can easily show leadership since Kyoto.
	Globally, we have made advances under the leadership of this Government. When it comes to the argument for a statutory framework for carbon targets, tell me of any other country that has done that. If we look at other countries' proposals, we see that are the most advanced. I have the advantage of being the rapporteur for the Council of Europe environment committee, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale)-so I will go to Copenhagen-and I have had to look at what all the other countries have done. Without doubt, we have led on the major changes and delivered them.
	The hon. Gentleman said that we should work with the private sector. Has he not heard of the climate change levy? How does he think that that came about? It was a major contribution to reducing carbon emissions, and it was done by the private sector voluntarily working with the Government to achieve the target. He just does not know what has happened since 1997, and that is why his judgments are so wrong today.
	As the Prime Minister recognises, adaptation, mitigation and the other policies will require money. It is our Prime Minister who has put a figure on the amount needed, for the first time, and we will have to do a lot more to achieve it. No other country has done that and we have shown leadership, in the hope that we will achieve delivery internationally. We need global action and we have done well in leading that. We also need national policies, and we have shown leadership with the low-carbon road plan and the other issues that my hon. Friend the Minister has worked on. She has an excellent record and I congratulate her.
	We also need action at a local level. I have campaigned in schools on the environment and specifically on 10:10, and I fully support it, but we have to balance that campaign against the Government's proposals and what they will deliver over time. It is not long until 2020, and if we do not make the decisions by 2015 we will not achieve the reductions that we need, so we have set targets nationally.
	The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) is very vocal in my area in opposition to wind farms, incinerators and anything that will help to deal with climate change. He should talk to the planning people. Offshore we are on target, but onshore is more difficult. Some 75 per cent. of all planning applications for wind farms are turned down, mainly by Tory authorities, including in the east Yorkshire area that he represents. He campaigns on the basis that people want to keep their view, but that will not do anything to reduce carbon emissions or increase alternative energy provision.

Graham Stuart: By forcing policy on people-as the former Deputy Prime Minister liked to do in all his policy areas-instead of working with them, we end up with fewer wind farms. The right hon. Gentleman is always trying to overturn the local will of the people. That is what has caused the problem and that is why people reject his form of politics.

John Prescott: I do wish the hon. Gentleman would go and talk to his Tory council and see what is actually happening. I have 44 examples of wind farm applications all over the country that have been turned down. They were recommended by the planning officers, but they were rejected by Tory councillors. On appeal, 70 per cent. of those applications, which were rejected by the elected authorities, are imposed, because they are an essential part of our drive to reduce carbon emissions and increase alternative energy supply. Let us have a bit more sense and some more facts- [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) must not ask a question and then keep chuntering from a sedentary position while the answer is being given.

John Prescott: The real issue is achieving agreement at Copenhagen-

Oliver Heald: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

John Prescott: No, because other hon. Members wish to speak.
	I do not think that the European deal, which is based on emissions and which I call plan A, will work. There are 187 countries, not the 40-odd that were at Kyoto. We need consensus, and we need to recognise that 80 per cent. of the world lives in poverty. We are the 20 per cent. who poisoned the world. The emissions argument in the European deal would mean that less developed countries do not get the right to grow in the way that they should, and they know that. Instead of measuring our progress on emissions-whether 20 or 30 per cent.-we should start talking about gigatonnes. Let us measure that progress according to poisoning per head per year: in America it is 20 tonnes per head; in Europe 10 tonnes; in Japan 12 tonnes; in China 5 tonnes; in India 2 tonnes; and in Africa 1 tonne. Some 80 per cent. of the world's population suffer the poverty of living on less than $2 a day. Unless Copenhagen recognises that the agreement must be about social justice, it will fail.
	We must change, therefore, to a better way of measuring our progress. Many countries want to find an agreement; they certainly do not want to be accused of failing. However, we will not dot our i's and cross our t's at Copenhagen. We did not do that at Kyoto; we agreed the principles and then we went to the conference of parties to renegotiate. At the end of the day, Copenhagen will mean the leaders getting together, and who is the one man who has said that he will go to Copenhagen? Who is leading? Our Prime Minister has made it clear that it will be a political fix. The world needs it and if we are to look after our children and our children's children, we had better start thinking seriously locally, nationally and globally. Britain is giving the leadership on that.

Malcolm Bruce: My hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) made it clear that the Liberal Democrats are trying to focus on a very simple thing that the House could do today: sign up for the 10:10 campaign. I have absolute admiration for the Minister. Her commitment on this subject is acknowledged and her contribution is huge, but the fact remains that the Government sound as if they are looking for excuses not to adopt a motion that her own policies would enable them to deliver if they were implemented. Surely the House should be able to decide whether it signs up for 10:10. If the House votes for the Government amendment, it will be unable to do so; only by voting for the Liberal Democrat motion can the House assert that it wishes to do so.

Hugh Bayley: rose-

Malcolm Bruce: I shall not take the hon. Gentleman's intervention, but I will anticipate it. He said that the House of Commons Commission had indicated that it did not wish to go down that route, but that does not prevent the House from saying that it wants it to do so and asking it to think again. The 10:10 website, which I looked at today, says that the House of Commons has the opportunity to sign up for 10:10 today and asks people to ask their MP to do so. If the House does not pass this motion, I assume that tomorrow the website will say, Parliament failed to join the 10:10 campaign because the Labour Whips would not allow it to. Some Labour Members should ask themselves whether they want to be in that position.

Karen Buck: The right hon. Gentleman feels strongly that Parliament has to commit to the 10:10 campaign today, but why was that not proposed by the Liberal Democrats as an amendment to the Climate Change Act 2008 when we passed it just a few months ago? Is it not a fact that this is about not a serious, sustained reduction in carbon emissions, but a gimmick to make them feel better?

Malcolm Bruce: Hang on. I did not like the last bit of the hon. Lady's intervention. So 10:10 is a gimmick? Is that what she is saying? The fact is that there was no 10:10 campaign when the 2008 Act went through Parliament, but there is now and it has widespread support individually and collectively. It is right for the House to use this opportunity to give a lead by saying, We wish to join that campaign as a Parliament, as well as by urging the Government and other bodies to do so.

Hugh Bayley: rose-

Malcolm Bruce: I am anxious to let other people make their speeches.
	The point that I want to get across is that all of us have to think hard about the practicalities involved and how we can engage with central and local government to help each other to achieve the aim of joining the campaign.

Joan Ruddock: I have defended, and explained, the Government's position. I have made no mention of the House and its administration, which is a matter for the House. We have not in any way sought to prevent that from happening.

Malcolm Bruce: I am grateful for the Minister's intervention, and I accept her sincerity. On the other hand, the House faces a practical problem. If it wishes to join 10:10, it needs to vote for the Liberal Democrat motion, because it contains the wording that would allow that to happen. It is unfortunate that the Government, in seeking to amend the motion, did not incorporate that part of it and so, I suggest, make it easier for their own Members to support it. Some Labour Members should examine whether they really want to be in the position of having rejected that option.

Hugh Bayley: rose-

Malcolm Bruce: I cannot take another intervention as others need to speak.
	I will come to what the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) said shortly-I completely agree with his closing remarks-but before I do, let me say that we need to give people a lot more help domestically to deliver reductions. We are still taking a rather scatter-gun approach. Everybody knows that there are technologies out there, but it is difficult to get hold of them. For example, for the past seven or eight years, I have been told that micro-combined heat and power systems will be available next year-indeed, I am still told that. However, people find it difficult to know how to engage with that process and whether to choose air or water source heat pumps, or where to get them from.
	There is still a huge role for solar power in this country, which is totally un-resourced. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman said in a previous incarnation that he would make it a building regulation that solar panels would be incorporated into the roofs of all new houses, but that does not seem to have happened. We therefore need to move towards giving people those opportunities.
	I represent a constituency that is a major producer of oil and gas, and it will continue to be so for many decades to come. However, my constituency is also trying to adapt the technologies used for developing oil and gas to support the development of large-scale renewables systems, particularly in the marine environment. That is being done by installing offshore wind farms and tidal and wave technology, as well as other mechanisms to which the technology developed to install oil and gas platforms and pipelines is appropriately adapted. Indeed, we are looking for the opportunity to adapt such technology to deliver on our targets.
	The point was made at a presentation in the House only a few months ago that if we are to deliver on our offshore wind targets, we need huge investment in lifting vessels that are capable of installing them, yet there is no indication that that is happening. As a consequence, we will not be able to achieve our targets. I am not criticising; I am simply saying that there is so much to be done if we are to deliver on that.
	Finally, on the domestic front, I wonder whether the Government could use their unexpected role as the owner of substantial parts of our financial institutions to give people the mechanisms to invest in renewable technology and, in the process, create the thousands of green jobs that would help us out of the recession and reduce our emissions. There is now a unique and unexpected serendipity of circumstances, which, if the Government joined all those threads together, could enable us to move faster than we are. That is not a criticism of the Government, but perhaps a challenge and an invitation to take that idea forward.
	I want to pick up on the remarks that the right hon. Gentleman made about Copenhagen. He is absolutely right: if Copenhagen degenerates into the rich nations' club, with those countries trying to decide how to share out their emissions, there will be no point in going. It is as simple as that. Why on earth should the poor countries of the world sign up to anything that is conducted in that spirit?
	As the Chairman of the Select Committee on International Development, I know only too well that the perpetrators of climate change are us-the developed world-while the victims are the poorest countries in the world. My Committee will be in Bangladesh and Nepal next week. Bangladesh is probably one of the poorest countries in the world that is suffering most from climate change. Half the country could disappear in 20 years unless Bangladesh has not only the mitigation measures, but the adaptation measures-the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) has left the Chamber-to enable it to manage.
	As I found out from evidence given to my Committee yesterday, Bangladesh does not need a Dutch solution, because the way that the water flows there is very different from how it stands in the Netherlands, and it therefore requires a different set of technologies. Those technologies are ones that the west will have to help Bangladesh with, through both practical resources and technology. We have to commit to undertake to do that at Copenhagen. It is about technology and money.
	With that qualification, I welcome the Government's indication that they accept wholeheartedly the limit of 10 per cent. of overseas aid and development for climate change, but I suggest that there might be more strictures than that, and perhaps voluntarily. The second one may not be acceptable, but the first is that we should consider praying for climate change investment out of official development assistance only if it also delivers poverty reduction at the same time.

Barry Gardiner: Of course.

Malcolm Bruce: Well, I take that as a given, but it is important that that qualification is written in and the understanding is clear, so that projects are evaluated accordingly.
	The second stricture that I was considering was that this proposal would be uncomfortable for the United Kingdom and should perhaps apply only to the countries that have achieved the 0.7 per cent. of GDP. People in poor countries are saying that the 10 per cent. rule implies that 10 per cent. is being skimmed off the development aid that they were expecting, in order to deal with climate change, which is a problem of our making from which they are suffering. I agree with the Prime Minister that we must find substantial additional resources, and that we need to make it clear that those resources are going to be transferred from the rich countries to the poor countries to help them to meet the challenge.
	I should like to mention one particular exchange with the Prime Minister. At one point, he called for the World Bank to be turned into the environment bank. I shall give him the benefit of the doubt and say that that was a well-intentioned suggestion, but our Committee saw the danger of the World Bank, which has as a prime responsibility the reduction of poverty, being subsumed into making climate change a priority. I am glad to say that that proposal has not been pursued. We need to tackle both problems.
	The Minister and I were active in the GLOBE forum of legislators, which is still continuing. She and I chaired the first meeting in London, in the run-up to Gleneagles, and another is taking place in Copenhagen this weekend. Legislators from around the world are going to try to help world leaders to come up with a text that is deliverable, that has the support of Parliaments-Governments and Oppositions-and that persuades the poor countries that there is a benefit to be gained, rather than a continuation of their suffering as a result of climate change. If we can bind Parliaments and Governments together, and bind successive Governments to meeting those commitments, we will have achieved a great deal. I believe that the interaction of Parliaments and Governments is the only way to do this, because Governments come and go, but Parliaments, although they change, can continue to provide the steel in the commitment to ensure that we not only make targets but deliver the policies that will make a difference.

Elliot Morley: I am very pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce). I know how much work he has put in, through GLOBE and other forums, and I agree with a great deal-although not all-of what he said. I welcome this opportunity to discuss not only the practical ways in which the Government can achieve their own targets, but the wider implications, particularly in the lead-up to Copenhagen.
	I accept that the Government must lead by example. They must set an example nationally-for the private sector and local authorities, for example-as well as internationally. They have a lot to be proud of with regard to their international lead, and I appreciate that the Liberal Democrats acknowledged that. They have given a world lead through the Climate Change Act 2008, through introducing the concept of carbon budgets, which will be crucial for the delivery of our targets, and through using market mechanisms, such as the emissions trading scheme that has been developed by the European Union.
	I also very much appreciate the fact that the Government have been working together with the Foreign Office, the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the Treasury and our embassies abroad. They have held seminars and campaigned to build support for the objectives that we must achieve at Copenhagen, and they deserve a great deal of credit for that. Their work is widely admired in many countries. That is not to say that we cannot do more, however. Progress has been slow in some areas.
	I welcome the fact that the Government have acknowledged the importance of the 10:10 campaign in their amendment and have not tried to undermine it in any way. The campaign has an important contribution to make. It is directed at individuals and organisations, which will have to make up their own minds and evaluate whether they will be able to achieve the target within 12 months. The problem with the Liberal Democrat motion is that it does not define the public sector or which aspects of government should be involved. I do not know whether a 10 per cent. reduction can be achieved in 12 months; I suspect that, in truth, no one knows that. These targets are worth looking at, and to do so does not undermine the 10:10 campaign, but it does no one any good to sign up to targets if they do not have the necessary information to enable them to deliver them. That would undermine the targets.

Anne Main: You do it all the time.

Elliot Morley: If the Government were to sign up to a target that they were not sure they could deliver, I suspect that the Opposition parties would not simply say, Well, it was a bold move, and you did your best. We understand. That is not to say that targets do not have a role or to say that targets should not be viewed as important-indeed, the Government have set them.

Lynne Jones: On that point, since the Government have already set themselves long-term but very challenging targets, and since we already know from the report by the Committee on Climate Change that they are not on a trajectory to meet those targets, should not the Government have the information, so that they know what to do to get back on target, which will probably require a 10 per cent. reduction in the very near future?

Elliot Morley: It may well; I accept that point. That is why I greatly welcomed what the Minister said about the obligation on all Government Departments to have carbon reduction plans in place by next April. It would be nice if that could be brought forward and if we could have an evaluation of whether a 10 per cent. target could be met. I certainly think that the Government should take that seriously as part of that carbon reduction plan. They should look at a proper assessment of what can and cannot be done.

Simon Hughes: I ask the right hon. Gentleman, who is very knowledgeable, to accept two points. First, the first 10 per cent. is often the easiest to obtain. Secondly, if bodies such as the NHS, which is the largest public sector organisation in this country and is larger than those in many other countries, can say, We think we can deliver, is it not ultimately a matter of will and intention rather than technicality? The figures and assessments exist, but it is all about the political will to deliver.

Elliot Morley: I agree with most of those points. It is quite likely that the first 10 per cent. reductions are achievable in many cases, but I return to the point that I do not know. I very much hope that the NHS signs up; it can do so, if it chooses, which is fine. The Government do not control that aspect of the NHS, of course, as they do not control local authorities, but I think that the NHS signing up would be a good thing. I also accept that there are savings to be had and appreciate that a great deal more could be done.
	The issue of the Department of Energy and Climate Change building and its energy rating provides a good example. What concerns me is that the DECC building-it was formerly owned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; it is a Government-owned building-was actually gutted. The outside is original, but there is nothing original on the inside. It was done not that long ago, but who on earth set the standards for that? Why does it have such a low rating for what is a comparatively modern construction? There is no excuse for it. What DEFRA did in its recent refurbishment-for example, the use of recycled carpet tiles and the introduction of water-saving and energy-saving measures-provides an example of what can be done with an old building. The Treasury received awards for its conversion of the old Treasury building into a modern building. Clearly, there has been a failure with the DECC building, and someone is responsible for it. That is what worries me.
	The Government are developing excellent frameworks and strategies, but the pace of progress in many cases is slow. I know that work has been done on procurement, but I am not convinced about the way in which the Government are delivering or whether they are exerting the influence that they should. An awful lot more could be done. I appreciate-I know it from my own experience-that the wheels of government turn at a terribly slow rate, and I think that that is the case whatever Government are in power. It could be better. I would be grateful if the Minister would ensure, in addition to the very welcome carbon reduction plans, that there is a mechanism for delivery-perhaps by using the green Ministers' network or perhaps by having a much tighter evaluation of Government procurement, Government buildings and so forth.
	Schools were mentioned earlier. I, too, was concerned about the original standards, but they have been improved. My own local authority is part of the current wave of Building Schools for the Future, and I am very encouraged by the work put into sustainability and energy saving. A great deal more could nevertheless be done, and the Government could have an enormous influence.
	Let me deal briefly with Copenhagen, because it is crucial. This year is crucial, because the outcome of Copenhagen is crucial: the outcome is crucial for every part of the globe, and it is not going to be easy to get the one that we want. There is still quite a gulf between many countries, particularly between the developing and the developed countries. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) rightly touched on that, and I agree with what he said.
	There must be an outcome, but I worry that the Copenhagen conference will just agree principles. There is some urgency, and Copenhagen must produce key objectives. Firm commitments from developed countries on their emissions are necessary. Given how difficult and crucial the conference will be, world leaders must be there. I am proud that our Prime Minister has given a lead by saying that he will go, and we need President Obama there, because key players such as the US, China, India and the UK will be very important.
	Some commitments from developing countries are necessary, although they should not be the same as ours, as the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) has mentioned, because they are entitled to develop, as we have. However, they can develop in a clean way, and there is a role for the developed world in putting money into a clean technology fund. My last point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) will welcome, is that we need an adaptation fund to help the most vulnerable, poorest countries adapt to what is happening now.
	The challenges are big and of great importance. I have great confidence in the leadership from our Government, but an awful lot of work must be done to build confidence with other countries. Part of that confidence building is leading by example. I, for one, am more than happy to sign up to the 10:10 campaign, because we can give individual leads by example as well as national and international ones. That is the important point that should come out of this debate.

John Gummer: I have shown that I support the Government when they do the right things in this area. I honour the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) who, from a standing start, worked extremely hard at Kyoto, where I was also part of the delegation, and gave a great reputation to Britain in those battles. I hope that he will therefore allow me to say that I am disappointed by the Government's actions in the run-up to Copenhagen, which, if they had been different, would have given our negotiators a much better position.

Oliver Heald: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

John Gummer: I will continue, if I may.
	The Climate Change Act 2008, rather than being a great Government triumph, was, first, forced on the Government, and, secondly, had to be constantly improved by the Opposition. I remember the battle on 80 per cent., and how long it took to win the Government round. Although I am pleased that the Government are on side, let us not take it as a great achievement. Let us look at how things have played out. Building Schools for the Future is still not right, because we still have to choose between green schools and schools that are big enough. As for recent changes, the new Ministry of Justice has installed hydrofluorocarbon air conditioning, and the same is true of the new Home Office. We know that HFCs are the most potent global warmer. We warned the Government, and they heard the warning. They said that they would act, but they did not do so. In every single case, we find the Government have not given the lead that they should. I do not want to go on about Heathrow, but how on earth can we go and fight such a battle at Copenhagen, when we have given the go-ahead to an utterly unnecessary and unacceptable extension to Heathrow?
	I walked into my local prison-voluntarily, I am happy to say-and I was pleased to see on its energy notice that it has the lowest level possible, and if there were a lower one, it would have that. When I asked, however, I was told that there was no money for that. We are pouring out energy as a result of the fact that not even the smallest things are being done. Take the scrappage scheme-no other Government would produce a scrappage scheme that allowed people to scrap a car and buy the biggest gas guzzler they liked. Where is the connection there?
	It is all very well for the Minister to utter soothing words, but let us consider the Obama statement about what the American Government would do. Some 38 per cent. of those measures contained a real green element, but where were we? Somewhere down in the low teens. Why were we not as good as the United States? Why were we not as good as Korea or even France? What was the Minister doing in allowing the Prime Minister to put forward something that put us at the bottom of the league?

Joan Ruddock: The fact is that United States started from a completely different point, because we had done so much already. It was low-hanging fruit, and a very different situation altogether.

John Gummer: I must tell the hon. Lady that that is not true. If she goes through the measures put forward by the United States one by one, she will see that all of them could have been adopted with advantage here. If she had done that, we would have been at the top of the list rather than the bottom.
	The Government amendment illustrates why the Minister does not carry conviction, and why the Government do not carry conviction. The amendment takes out anything that would cause the Government to do something and keeps in everything that would cause everybody else to do things. It reminds me of the beginning of Wuthering Heights, which involves a man who is cleaning up outside going through the Bible in order to throw all the curses at other people and to keep all the promises to himself. That is exactly what the Government are doing. It is a case of You get on with the job, but give me the credit. The situation strikes me as really serious.
	I hate saying nice things about the Liberal Democrats, but if the Government had read the Liberal Democrat motion, they would have noticed that they could have included the House. We could meet the 10 per cent. target merely by having a cool Chamber. The Chamber is incredibly hot today. Why on earth have we allowed that to happen? We would all be better with the odd jumper in the winter and rather less heat.
	The Government have put themselves in a position in which it is difficult to defend their activities at home, and thrilling to support their statements abroad. We are all proud of a Government who, with their consensus attitude, have been trying their best to promote these matters. I do not for a moment take that away from the Minister. I am merely saying that we cannot go on saying something abroad and not doing it at home.
	Let me list five things that the Minister could do, in addition to changing her mind about the motion. First, the Government should commit themselves to not taking on any building of any kind that does not meet the highest energy rating. Secondly, they should commit themselves to ensuring that that applies to all quasi-governmental organisations. It would not be difficult; it is quite possible-we are only talking about new actions to be taken in the future.
	Thirdly, the Government could stand up and say that they will ban HFCs. The Government voted with the brown people-the people in the European Union who did not want to ban them. They voted against Austria and Denmark. What were we doing supporting the dirty team rather than the clean team? Why were our Government voting on the wrong side?
	Why do we have a climate change levy, which is only good because the name is good, and not a carbon tax? What kind of attitude is that? The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East, has left the Chamber now that I have given him his compliment, but I will give him the opposite now. He cannot defend a climate change levy that is a levy on energy and not on carbon. The Government should change that forthwith. There are five very simple things that they could do, but they are not even prepared to sign up to the 10:10 campaign.
	The Minister has put me in a difficult position. I do not want to be directly unpleasant, but it is not possible to say that we cannot achieve the 10:10 target on the way to meeting our carbon budget. Let me explain why we have to do it. We have gone on for too long believing that if we say that something will be done by 2050, 2020 or 2015, it will all happen. We must show that it has to be done now, because the urgency is huge. If the Minister really thinks that this Government are so efficient, and these buildings are so energy-efficient, that they cannot manage a 10 per cent. decrease in one year, she is going against every bit of advice and anecdotal evidence. I do not know of a company worth its salt that has not seen that for economic reasons it has had to save 10 per cent. of its carbon footprint. Why do this Government not say, This is nothing to do with greenery; this is just to do with trying to balance the books. In the next year, in this very difficult situation, we will do it? The Minister must say that, and not simply say, I don't know how we're going to do it. We may not be able to do it. She must stand up and say, We'll do it, and then it will be done.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I just remind the House that from now on there will be a four-minute limit on speeches?

Nigel Griffiths: I am not a Johnny-come-lately to the environmental cause, having joined Friends of the Earth shortly after it was formed and having campaigned with it throughout the course of three decades. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister and the Government for giving Friends of the Earth £30,000 to go around Europe to campaign to ensure that in Copenhagen we realise its goals, and our goals too.
	I cannot support the motion because it comes from a party whose record when in power at local level, as well as when not in power, is absolutely woeful. To take just one example, trying to cut back on the use of cars through road pricing is a key environmental policy, but the Liberal Democrats are the party who opposed the extension here in London, and fought and campaigned against it being introduced in Manchester and my home town of Edinburgh, while all the time saying, Of course, in principle we generally support it.

Anne Main: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nigel Griffiths: No, there is not time.
	The Liberal Democrats are the party whose policy statements say it wants to see hundreds of new trains and a massive investment in rail, but in Edinburgh it could not find the £38 million last year that consultants recommended in order to reopen the south suburban line stations and to ensure that up to 1.4 million commuting passengers were taken off our roads.
	The Liberal Democrats are also, of course, the party who, wherever there is a wind farm project, find a good reason to oppose it and-

Martin Horwood: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nigel Griffiths: There is not time, I am afraid.

Martin Horwood: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nigel Griffiths: There is not time in four minutes.

Martin Horwood: rose-

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. When a Member says he is not going to give way and it is clear that he will not give way, it is simply a waste of time for the hon. Gentleman to persist.

Nigel Griffiths: Let me give the hon. Gentleman an example to put in his pipe and smoke. In the western isles, where the principled former Labour Member of Parliament Calum MacDonald supported the independent local council's bid to grant a wind farm, and where the Member of the Scottish Parliament, Alasdair Morrison, did the same, it was the hon. Gentleman's party, along with the Scottish National party and the Tories, who ran the campaign against the wind farms there, as they do elsewhere, and succeeded in removing these two people of principle. That, I am afraid, is rather typical.
	I feel sorry for the Vestas workers in the Isle of Wight, but it is no secret that its Conservative council will not allow any wind farms to be put on the island. It is then very difficult for such workers to argue in the interests of their manufacturing base if their own neighbours-their own council-will not support them when they try to lobby Government or anyone else.
	I want to praise my hon. Friend the Minister and remind the House of the record of the £1 billion already spent-not promised, not mere words-on regeneration and renewables, of the £97 million spent on marine, and of the £31 million on photovoltaics. In my constituency, that has meant that the Napier university Collington complex library computers are now powered by photovoltaics, the development of which was paid for by the Government. There is also the DART project to recycle tyres, that Professor Nick Christof and his colleagues have pioneered with £100,000 from the Government. That is part of the £1 billion already invested. I am delighted to note that we are stepping up our investment. That will benefit the country. I urge the House to reject the motion.

Andrew Stunell: I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) and this motion. Ever since I entered this House in 1997, I have had a deep interest in this issue and have tried to ensure that this House took it seriously. I served as my party's energy spokesman for about eight years, during which time I shadowed seven Labour Energy Ministers-I believe there were also five Conservative shadow Ministers, so consistency has not always been around in this area.
	In 2004, I was fortunate to be top of the ballot and able to introduce the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Bill in this House. I wish to say to the House and to the Minister that there have been missed opportunities as a consequence of the Government not choosing to implement what was in that Bill, which allowed them to amend the building regulations to take account of the sustainability and efficiency of buildings. The Minister knows this very well, but I wish to remind her that buildings are responsible for more than 60 per cent. of this country's carbon emissions. If we are to make any serious effort to tackle the problem, we have to do something about buildings.
	I also wish to remind the Minister that the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004, as the Bill became, has lain dormant for five years and that the Department for Communities and Local Government has a consultation document out on the next generation of building regulations that still does not include any reference to implementing that Act or making any of its provisions legally enforceable. I am not sure, because this has not been mentioned, whether any other Member in the House is aware that the Audit Commission today published a report entitled Lofty ambitions, which makes the point that the single most important thing that the Government could do to reduce carbon emissions would be to increase the regulatory requirements in part L of the building regulations and commence an immediate programme to tackle the terribly poor standard of our building stock. Such an approach would reduce people's bills, reduce fuel poverty, increase the quality of life of the people living in these houses and help to save the planet.
	I was terribly disappointed by the Minister's speech. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) made one of the best speeches that I have heard him make-that is because he is a Back Bencher now. I have heard the Minister make many excellent speeches when she was on the Back Benches, but her contribution today was a terrible disappointment. When she comes to write her autobiography in 30 years' time, she will not have this as her proudest day in support of the environmental movement.
	When are the Government going to improve part L of the building regulations? When are they going to take advantage of the 2004 Act, which this Minister supported, as did the Government at the time? When is it going to come into force? May I also ask her when we will have a spark of life on tackling the built environment? Oh, how I agree with the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer)-we are not building schools for the future; we are building schools just as we did in the past. We have to tackle the issue of public buildings, the built environment in the public sector and homes-the legislation is in place to do so. The Audit Commission wants her to do that, as does the Association of British Insurers. I could cite a tremendously long list here. This House wants her to do it, so for goodness' sake let us start tackling the problem of the building stock now.

Barry Gardiner: I will tell hon. Members how the Liberal Democrats in Brent sign up to the 10:10 campaign. Under the Labour party, Brent council was on track for a 20 per cent. reduction in its emissions by 2011. On Monday, the Liberal Democrats and their Tory partners in the administration signed up, with great fanfare, to the 10:10 campaign. At the next executive committee meeting they will take delivery of proposals, which they intend to support, that will reduce the figure from 20 per cent. to 6 per cent. by 2011. Under the Liberal and Tory policies at Brent council, the 20 per cent. reduction will not be reached until 2020.
	I regret the tone of today's debate. Normally when we debate matters of climate change, we have a considered and measured debate that is consensual and, usually, good. The responsibility for the way in which this debate has gone is to be found in the nature of the Liberal Democrat motion. The Liberal Democrats know, we know and everybody in the House knows that it is tendentious. It was put forward, as my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) said, as a gimmick, to try to bandwagon and to do something that the Liberal Democrats thought might be populist and might embarrass the Government. That is why the debate has taken the shape that it has.
	The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) spoke, quite properly, about the discussions that he had had with the Chinese delegation this morning under the auspices of GLOBE and of the discussions that he had had with Congressman Wang. The hon. Gentleman also said-although it was when he departed from his script and got carried away-that that was why the Chinese did not take the Government seriously. Earlier this afternoon, as I was chairing the GLOBE discussions with Congressman Wang, I happened to note down what he said: The UK is one of the few countries that has honoured their commitment and achieved their targets and I wish that all developed countries would learn from the UK in this respect. I am afraid that that knocks out of the water the remarks made by the hon. Gentleman.

Gregory Barker: What I actually said was that the Chinese Government set much more store by short-term action than by long-term targets, and that although I thought that it was not a case of either/or, I could certainly see their point.

Barry Gardiner: Hansard will show what the hon. Gentleman said.
	I want to turn to the real point, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). It concerns gigatonnes. This weekend, I will be going to Copenhagen as part of the GLOBE delegation and we will present to the Danish Prime Minister, ahead of the negotiations in December, the proposals from a group of legislators across the globe on the issue. The key point is gigatonnes, as 17 gigatonnes of annual emissions reductions need to take place by 2020. The reduction of only 5 gigatonnes can take place in the developed countries at less than €60 per tonne. That means that although the problem has been created, as my right hon. Friend said, by the developed countries, they are not capable within their own boundaries of producing the gigatonnes of solutions that are required to mitigate this problem. The funding for that extra 12 gigatonnes of abatement must come from the developed countries and be put through to the developing nations so that they can sustain equitable growth and standards of living and so that they can rise out of poverty on a low-carbon trajectory. That is the critical issue.
	At Copenhagen, although we must sign under a post-2012 protocol, the developed countries must sign up to lower emissions and commit ourselves to those emissions reductions. We must also, on top of that, bear down on the caps so that we can generate through offsets the amount of money that is needed to bring people out of poverty in the developing world.

Tim Farron: In supporting the motion, I shall restrict my comments exclusively to the Government's failure to demonstrate leadership over climate change when it comes to our food market and reducing food miles.
	The world's population is set to increase by 50 per cent. over the next 40 years. Demand for food is set to double in that time, yet the Government have presided over a criminal reduction in this country's food production capacity. That matters, because the Government's target of an 80 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions-to which we all agreed-looks ludicrous when set against the ever-expanding emissions caused by the transportation of rapidly increasing amounts of food from overseas to our tables.
	According to the Government's own figures, since 1997 the proportion of imported meat has increased by two thirds, the proportion of eggs that we have imported has tripled, and the proportion of vegetables that we import has risen by one third. In the last two years alone, the proportion of liquid milk that we import has increased by almost 60 per cent. If we are going to tackle climate change, we must ensure that we produce as much as possible of the food that we eat as close to home as we can.
	To do that, we have to ensure that we produce more food, not less, with the help of a farming industry that is confident and not fearful about its future. That means that, if we are to reduce carbon emissions, we have to expand our capacity to produce food in the UK. It is one of the easiest things that the Government could do to tackle climate change, and there are thousands of innovative farmers around the country itching to take the lead.
	The reduction in capacity is happening because the Government will not tackle seriously the power of supermarkets, which place no environmental standards on their procurement policies and will not act to ensure fair trade for our farmers so that they stay in business. As we have heard, the public sector spends about £2 billion a year on food procurement for Government Departments, schools, prisons and hospitals. The NHS is the largest food purchaser in the country, spending nearly a quarter of the total public sector food budget, yet 75 per cent. of the meat and fish used in our hospitals is imported from abroad.
	Another dreadful consequence of the importation of meat products is the destruction of the rain forest. Every 10 minutes, an area the size of 200 football pitches is chopped down in the Amazon rain forest, all to provide pasture land for cattle or to make way for soy plantations to provide feed for them. We could-and should-produce both in this country, slashing food miles and ensuring the preservation of the crucial carbon sink that is the rain forest.

Lynne Jones: Is the hon. Gentleman going to mention the increased emissions as a result of our huge food waste? That is far more significant than food miles for our CO2 emissions.

Tim Farron: The hon. Lady has read my mind, as I was about to mention that. About one in three of the bags of food that we purchase at the supermarket or wherever is effectively dumped. We wasted £10 billion worth of food in the last year, which is the equivalent of throwing away every third bag. The contribution to harmful emissions from landfill and emissions associated with wasted production is immense. There has been no leadership on tackling that from the Government: they have not attempted to address the wasteful, buy-one-get-one-free culture or, for example, the unbelievably fussy and excessive guidance on sell-by dates. Cutting out that waste would reduce greenhouse gases, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) suggests, by the equivalent of taking one in every five cars off the road.
	The Government have also failed dismally when it comes to making sustainable use of food waste. Why are we not transforming organic waste into green energy? In Germany, there are 25,000 anaerobic digesters, but there are only 38 in the UK. I hope that the 39th digester will be opened soon in Casterton in my constituency, but that will be the result of work done by the local community, and despite the Government.
	In conclusion, nearly everyone-apart from one or two of the Tories' mates-now accepts that climate change is real and the result of human activity. However, if that is the case, it can be reversed by human activity as well, with activity being the important word. It is important that the Government act. They need to do the simple things as well as the difficult things, because these are what will make the difference in this crucial fight. The good news is that some of the simplest things that the Government could do to tackle climate change are to be found in the food market.

Michael Meacher: The Liberal Democrat motion deals with climate change leadership, but I think that by any standards the Government's record in this area is pretty good. The UK is the first country in the world to set up rolling carbon budgets, and to have set a carbon emission reduction target of 80 per cent. by 2050. The Government are the first to have set up a prestigious and independent Climate Change Committee to advise them, and they also included aviation and shipping in the Climate Change Act 2008 and introduced feed-in tariffs. So far, so good.
	Of course there are still problems, as there are in every country in the world. We should acknowledge those problems. Yes, we have not done anything like enough in carbon emissions reductions to meet the 60 per cent. target, let alone an 80 per cent. target. We have committed ourselves to trebling airport capacity by 2050, which would have the opposite effect. It would neutralise most, if not all, of the carbon reductions in virtually every other sector.
	The commitment to building the first coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent is not very wise, when carbon capture and storage is highly unlikely to be available commercially for at least 15 years. On this island with enormous renewables capacity, we have a great deal more to do, as we still generate only 4 per cent. of electricity from renewables, compared to 10 to 25 per cent. in the other big European countries and 30 to 50 per cent. in Scandinavia.
	I shall mention briefly three other areas for the forthcoming Copenhagen summit, where I believe it is necessary to make significant further advance and, above all, to get the developing countries on side. Without that, we will make no progress at all. First, substantially slowing the rate of deforestation worldwide, which is causing something like 20 per cent. of global emissions, should be a major objective of the Copenhagen negotiations-not by giving enormous sums of money to the major countries involved, because all that money would certainly be filtered off into the pockets of corrupt officials, but by tough international action against illegal logging corporations, which should be held to account and prosecuted in the courts of the metropolitan countries.
	Secondly, we should champion a drive towards a worldwide carbon tax and show that we mean it by looking to introduce it ourselves, to be fiscally neutral by corresponding offsetting on VAT. That could do more than any other single measure to green the international economy and to arrest the spread of climate catastrophe.
	Thirdly, we should reverse the current policy on carbon offsetting, which is allowing 50 per cent. and perhaps as much as 70 per cent. of carbon credits to be purchased from abroad, which is a sort of get out of jail free card and removes the pressure for major qualitative change within the UK. It is flawed by the additionality problem, but more particularly, the big countries-China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico-will co-operate only if they see that we who, in their view, caused the problem are taking sufficient action. If they think we are simply buying our way out abroad while doing too little at home, they will not co-operate. Then the global problem will be insoluble.
	The Government's record on combating climate change is not perfect, but it is arguably the best of any country in the world. I am pleased and proud to support them in the Lobby tonight.

Chloe Smith: I thank the Deputy Speaker for giving me the chance to speak, and I thank the Liberal Democrats for initiating the debate. I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell): everybody wants to tackle climate change. The question is how we do that. I shall limit my comments to that being a matter of trust-the plans that the Government have for being trusted to deliver a response.
	I applaud voluntary action and fully support the 10:10 campaign. I am proud to have been able to answer many of my constituents already by saying that I fully support their campaign to have us support that. But we know that Government action is also necessary. Combating climate change is not something that individuals can do on their own. I welcome the bipartisan and tripartisan approach in the House today, and the commitment of so many Members to action on climate change, and I welcome the previous achievements of the House in passing the Climate Change Act 2008 to contribute towards what we all know we need to do.
	The Government's current plan lasts for 10 years and requires buy-in. That is what we must ensure by contributing a little towards that today in the debate. We may require a general election for a full mandate for such a plan, but before that moment comes next year, which I am sure we will all welcome, we must take the opportunity for international action. Many hon. Members around the House have commented on what must be achieved at Copenhagen later this year.
	I come back to the domestic aspect. I shall speak about it as a matter of trust, and about what people look to us in the House to do. I hope I am not being too cheeky in suggesting that as the most recent Member to enter the House, I may bring with me a view from outside. That is to say that any Government action will require clear measurement, and the Government will have to go through a whole sequence: understanding the problem; diagnosing action that is possible; selecting the tools that we can use to go about those actions; setting targets; empowering people to meet those targets; and grasping the incentives available to help people to do that. I return to the value of the 10:10 campaign as a voluntary tool; it enables people to say, We can do this, we want to do this, we want to be held to account, and we want the Government to join us.
	The Government plan must then be trackable and measurable. I welcome the recent publication of the Turner report, saying that the Government must be held to account for their actions. It says, too, that in the coming months measurement will be harder, because of distortions due to the level of economic activity, or lack thereof. Against that backdrop, we must make doubly sure that the Government-of any colour-can be trusted to do what we all want them to do.
	We cannot drop any part of the cycle that I have just outlined. People must be able to trust that the Government's plan will do all those things, and observe the Government doing all those things, so that individuals know that they are getting what they have signed up to-what they have put their necks on the line for, and said they will do.
	Only last Friday, I had the pleasure of visiting in my constituency a school-not a Building Schools for the Future school, but a local academy-with a wonderful new building that serves as a teaching tool for the children on energy efficiency. That is the kind of measure that we need to help people to trust that things can be done and to learn how things can be done.
	Finally, I draw the House's attention to the question of how this Government will gain the mandate for their 10-year plan. If they do not, we must seriously question the measure.

Alan Simpson: I fully endorse the 10:10 campaign and proposals, and I hope that the House will fully endorse them and sign up to them tonight. The Government are right that we need more than a one-year strategy, because we have to have a strategy that takes us through to 2020, but the most important part of the imperative in signing up to the campaign has not come from any argument in this House; it came in September from Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He gave us all the starkest warning-the shot across the bows-when he said that it would not be enough for the world to aim to restrict carbon emissions to 450 ppm.
	If we wish to keep climate change to within a 2° C rise this century, the practical limit will have to be 350 ppm. We are already at 385 ppm and the question is: how do we row back from that? The starting point is now. Rajendra Pachauri urged on us the point that what we do in the next three years will determine the shape of so much that follows. I am therefore happy to sign up to the belief that we need to set a 10 per cent. target for the coming year, and probably for the year after and the year after that-for at least the five years that follow. It is not a question of what the political will acquiesies to; it is an acknowledgement that the world will not wait. The two most important parts of the motion before us, on which I shall focus, are first, the significance of the built environment, and secondly, the mechanisms that will drive us into a renewable energy future.
	The point has already been made that the built environment contributes 60 per cent. of our carbon emissions. If we were to set the targets that would meet our legally binding obligation to eradicate fuel poverty in Britain by 2016, we would have to set a standard assessment procedure rating for housing of 81, and establish a building renewal programme of about £4 billion a year between now and 2016. It is a lot of money, but we could save that amount in respect of many speculative schemes that cost the Government, the taxpayer and the bill payer far more.
	If we were to do that, what we would achieve? The figures that have been provided to the House are staggering. If we were to set up that programme, we would take 81 per cent. of the fuel poor out of poverty by 2015. In doing so, we would reduce the terawatt hours of energy consumption by 48.1 TWh. That would mean a percentage reduction in energy consumption of 56 per cent. and a reduction in carbon emissions of 59 per cent. People talk about the 10 per cent. commitment at a personal level; this is 10 per cent. at a collective level. At the same time as saving carbon and saving the planet, it would take the poor out of fuel poverty-an adaptation measure that saved lives.

Lynne Jones: Given that huge numbers of the public use public buildings and that behavioural change could take place, does my hon. Friend agree that if it is not practicable for the Government to achieve a 10 per cent. reduction in the next year or so, it is not practicable to achieve our other targets?

Alan Simpson: I do not believe that it is impossible for the Government to achieve that 10 per cent. reduction. One of the ways in which they could deliver on it is by not only accelerating the introduction of the feed-in tariff regime that they propose, but changing the framework from one that works back from a minimalist, fairly measly assumption that we can deliver only 2 per cent. of our energy by 2020 from renewable tariffs to one with a target of 10 per cent., 15 per cent. or even almost 20 per cent.
	For those who say that that is too much, let me refer to a conversation that I had with colleagues in Germany this morning about their proposals for delivering 100 per cent. of renewable energy for their economy by 2050. I said, Look, isn't that a bit ambitious? One of them said, Well it might be, but let me ask if you are aware that last weekend 90 per cent. of Germany's energy came from wind and solar? It presented a bit of a problem on Monday when the rest of the energy-generating systems had to kick back in, but that is an interfacing issue about a transformation into a very different future.
	The difficulty for the UK is that we have set a threshold of ambition that will deliver the failure that it is designed to deliver. What we lack is the ambition to drive the transformation. We can start to achieve it by signing up to the 10:10 commitment and raising the level of feed-in tariffs to make a meaningful difference. Then we can save the generations who follow us.

David Heath: It is a delight to hear the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) talk about fuel poverty in such impassioned terms. That is precisely the issue that I tried to address through the Fuel Poverty Bill which I presented to Parliament and which, shamefully, this Government and this Minister finally killed off last Friday.
	As I walk around the parts of my constituency that are below sea level and see the houses that are flooded each year, and as I look at the one-in-25-year and one-in-50-year events that are now happening regularly, the scientist in me says, You cannot extrapolate from the particular to the general, but my heart tells me that something is going badly wrong. That is what is causing so many people in this country to recognise at long last that there is an urgency to this-that it is something that we cannot wait any longer to deal with.
	That is why the 10:10 campaign is so important, and why it is so disappointing to hear the Government, yet again, using all the excuses in the book to say that they will not do something positive about it instead of saying, This is something that we want to embrace-it's consistent with our principles and what we say we're going to do about public buildings, so yes, we will make it happen. I agree with the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who made a superb speech in support of the contention that if the Government cannot achieve the 10:10 objectives, they cannot achieve the other objectives that lie in the future.
	It is deplorable that the Government, by virtue of deleting the reference in our motion, are not allowing Parliament itself to sign up to 10:10, given that there is hardly a Member in this House who does not believe that the Commission could do the necessary work if it put its mind to it, and that we should instruct it to do so. I hope that Labour Back Benchers will be prepared to take a risk tonight and come into the Lobby with us to insist that that should be the case.

Lynne Jones: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Heath: I have only one minute left.
	What we have done in this House is considerable, and the Government should take credit for the good things that they have achieved, such as the Climate Change Act. They arrived at it by dint of pressure from all parts of the House, but it is of value. They rejected feed-in tariffs for a long time but eventually accepted them-although I agree that the design of them is deplorable. They are groping towards an energy policy, but there is no coherence to it.
	I look at all those things and think that we have an opportunity to arrive at consensus. We are lucky compared with America, where there are divergent views. We generally have a consensus in this country, not just between the political parties but with big business. We have a huge opportunity, and we can do so much more if we shut off the poverty of aspiration that still bedevils us and grasp the fact that doing the right thing is not only right environmentally but right economically. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South made that point. So many of the measures that we can take make economic sense, particularly in a recession when we are trying to save money. We can save the environment while saving money and creating jobs, and that should be the aspiration of this House.

Linda Gilroy: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner), I regret the tone of the debate. As has been amply shown, there is plenty of leadership at national level. I wish to talk about how that translates through to regional and local leadership.
	In Exeter we have the green jewel in the south-west's crown, the Met Office, which the Conservatives' defence spokesman recently seemed to think it would be a good idea to sell off at this critical time. Our regional leadership has come from the former and current regional Ministers, my right hon. Friends the Members for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw) and for South Dorset (Jim Knight), working alongside the South West of England Regional Development Agency. The Conservatives would abolish the RDAs, but that leadership has ensured that there are key priorities in our region on resource efficiency, renewable energy, waste management, climate change adaptation and low-carbon technologies.
	That has led to the region being the first to be given low-carbon economic area status as part of the Government's low-carbon industrial strategy. That designation involves £30 million for the wave hub energy demonstrator off Cornwall and £15 million for the peninsula institute for marine renewable energy, which is a joint project of Exeter and Plymouth universities. Those projects will make major contributions to the national targets on which we have to deliver, and they are an important illustration of how we need to continue to invest at a strategic level. That investment will take time to deliver.
	Locally, people in Plymouth are doing their bit. Not surprisingly in a constituency with 450 marine scientists and 1,500 environmental students, the university is top-performing in environment and sustainability, as rated by People and Planet in its green energy league table. There are businesses such as the Caribbean Car Wash, which has set a benchmark for high-quality eco-friendly car washing by reducing to half a litre the amount of water necessary to clean and valet a car.
	I regret that our Tory council has not signed up to the 10:10 agreement and that its leader set a bad example by objecting to a school's planning application for two small wind turbines and then employing a consultant when the school appealed. I regret the daft proposals to sell the green jewel in our city's crown, a successful bus company that is one of the few in the country to have added passengers in recent years.
	The 10:10 campaign is excellent, but no one should use it to talk down what we are achieving and our position of international leadership. Practicality is everything, and as my hon. Friend the Minister said in her opening remarks, some Departments have already taken the low-hanging fruit. Carbon budgets, mocked from the Tory Benches, will build on that success.
	There are those who are still sceptical, although perhaps none of them are present in the House today. It took only one small mistake to detract from Al Gore's brilliant film An Inconvenient Truth. The Government have to act responsibly, especially on matters in which they have already gathered in some of the low-hanging fruit.

Martin Horwood: Copenhagen is our last best chance to avoid catastrophe. For 30 years we have known about man-made climate change and I am deeply proud that the Liberal party, all those years ago, was the first British political party to address it. Since then, the science has become clearer and more worrying. There is now a clear global consensus among scientists that climate change is man-made but still preventable by human action-just.
	The economics have also become clearer. The sooner and more urgently we act, the less risk of an economic collapse that will make the current recession look like a vicarage tea party. The Stern report spelled that out very clearly. It concluded that an atmospheric concentration of about 550 parts per million CO2 was perhaps adequate as a stabilisation target. It is now pretty clear that that was much too high.
	We now know that about 2° C of global warming is all but inevitable, and that there is a significant risk of 4°, 5° or 6° C unless we have a concerted international deal. That would mean catastrophic disruption of food production, irreversible collapse of ice sheets and rain forests, huge areas of the planet rendered uninhabitable and mass displacement of people. With my background in Oxfam, I know what unimaginable human misery that would mean.
	As environmental shocks mount, more and more nations realise that a global deal is in their interests. China and India now clearly understand that. They have many of the poorest people in the world, who will be the hardest hit by global warming. They have taken a lead on many issues, including renewable energy and reforestation, in their own countries.
	We all agree that Britain also needs to take a lead; Parliament needs to take a lead. I pay tribute to the House of Commons Commission and the Parliamentary Estates management, which are making efforts. Only this week, they met myself and some of my constituents to attempt to find a solution to the large numbers of high-energy candle lights that proliferate on the estate, which take enormous numbers of people to replace all the time.

Hugh Bayley: I shall ask a question that I asked of Conservative Members. Earlier this week, the Commission decided that it would not sign up to the 10:10 commitment. The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey), who speaks for the Commission in the House, is a Liberal Democrat. Did he support the Commission's view?

Martin Horwood: I was giving credit to the Commission for the work that it has done, but I am afraid that on the 10:10 campaign the Chamber must trump the Commission. This is where we decide on Parliament's ambitions.
	I also give credit where it is due to the Government. It is fair to say that they have shown leadership in helping to put climate change on the international agenda and introduced the world's first climate change Act, although they were dragged somewhat reluctantly to the target of 80 per cent. However, it was supported by the Government in the end, which is good. They have also shown a commitment to renewable energy and carbon capture and storage, although they showed similar reluctance on feed-in tariffs and left something of a giant loophole in the CCS policy.
	However, the Government must also accept that there are some worrying signs of complacency and lack of urgency. As the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) pointed out, it does not really compute that the Government can give the go-ahead to the third runway at Heathrow based on flawed calculations of the future cost of climate change while trying to maintain an international position as strong as that of President Obama. The right hon. Gentleman was spot on when he spoke of how much greener most of the stimulus packages around the world are than our own.
	There is a constant recitation that we have been on target for Kyoto when, as the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) pointed out, that target was met long ago by the dash for gas. Actually, if the target is met, it will be partly because of the recession- [ Interruption. ] I am sorry, but it is true.
	The Government are at risk of being seen to ask everybody else to act, but not to act themselves. They have an energy bill of some £4 billion and massive buying power. The public sector has the chance to shape entire markets, and how British industry and the private sector respond to the challenge of climate change. It is very worrying that the Minister who opened the debate, I hope in a lapse, described the 10:10 campaign as a gesture- [ Interruption. ] Those were her very words. It is also worrying that she cast doubt on the Government's ability to sign up to 10:10 despite the fact that her Department has done so. Look at the list of organisations that have had that ambition and signed up to 10:10. It includes the Environment Agency; Newcastle, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Bristol universities; 52 local councils responsible for 8.8 million people, including most recently, I am proud to say, Bristol city council; more than 150 schools; 40 NHS trusts; BQ; Aviva; Microsoft; Atkins Global; and the Royal Mail-the latter does not get everything right, but it has signed up to the 10:10 campaign. It is a fantastic campaign that has finally captured the real sense of urgency that is needed to put us on almost a war footing-that psychology that we must act soon to avert catastrophe.
	We have had one or two regrettably partisan and bad-tempered speeches. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths) claimed that the Liberal Democrats opposed wind power at local level. I can tell him about York, Leeds, Ipswich, Lewes, Cheltenham, Birmingham, Islington, West Berkshire, Devon, Vale of White Horse and Cornwall-I do not have time to finish the list. However, we have mostly heard real passion and wide support on both sides of the House. Many of the contributions have shown why the 10:10 campaign has captured the public imagination.
	I am proud to have followed my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), who has shown leadership on environmental issues for a few decades-I will not embarrass him by saying how many-and helped to make the Liberal Democrats such a green party.
	To the Conservative Front Bench, I say that I forgive their nuclear peccadilloes and some of the people with whom they keep company in Europe on climate change, and the occasional Back-Bench outburst on wind power, and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle on his articulate defence of the 10:10 campaign. He rightly pointed out that there is no conflict between carbon budgets of the kind supported in the Climate Change Act 2008 and the 10:10 campaign commitment. In fact, I would go further and say that committing to 10:10 will make those carbon budgets easier and cheaper to achieve for the British economy.
	I also give credit to the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) and all those Labour Back Benchers who have signed up to the 10:10 campaign. I hope that they are prepared, just this once, to defy the party Whips and do the right thing for this country, for the planet and the environment.
	I make a final appeal to the Minister. She has a proud record as a political campaigner. Many members of my party have followed her on marches in the past and listened to her defiance of the establishment. Her Secretary of State has asked for a popular mobilisation to help to push through action on climate change. Well, we have got that. It is called the 10:10 campaign and tonight is the night when we can take a decision as a Parliament to support it. The Minister has signed her Department up to it and she says that Departments are working hard to improve their admittedly miserable record to date. It is therefore a mystery why she will not allow her colleagues to commit the whole Government-or at least this Parliament-to the 10:10 campaign. This is our chance to send the clearest possible signal to campaigners across the country and Copenhagen negotiators across the world that we are committed to urgent action. The truth is that the Minister probably does support this campaign and it is the establishment in the Treasury, No. 10 or Lord Mandelson's Department who have got to her. This is the moment when she should join hon. Members on both sides of the House, rediscover her radical roots, be brave, ambitious and bold, and believe that together we can do more than we think we can-and support this motion.

David Kidney: We have had 17 excellent speeches. Although the tone of the debate has been sparky, as a couple of hon. Members have commented, that edge has illuminated the issues before us. I noted that when the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) opened the debate, he said that he would applaud the Government for the things that we have done well, and he did so in his speech. However, we did not fail to notice that no credit is given in the motion for anything good that the Government have done, and I regret that.
	I have signed up to the 10:10 campaign. In fact, that benefited me in this debate, because I first heard that it would take place today in a text message from the campaign. The campaign is valuable for the reasons that many hon. Members mentioned in the debate: it is a bottom-up campaign that draws people in, persuades people to take action and is voluntary. I wish that I had only a fraction of its skill in communications. Only a couple of weeks ago, I launched the carbon reduction commitment energy efficiency saving scheme. That massive cap-and-trade scheme, which starts next year and covers every Department, most of local government and most of the local bodies referred to tonight, did not get a patch of the coverage that the 10:10 campaign has received already. It is remarkable that decision makers in the House during this debate gave no recognition of the fact that, starting next year, the CRC will begin to reduce emissions across the entire public sector.
	Some people say that to start now we have to sign up to 10:10 across the entire sector. Have people such short memories? This year, the House passed the carbon budgets, which we have already started to implement and which will put us on a trajectory to get us to the 34 per cent. reduction in our emissions that we need to reach by 2020.
	The Government's record to date is fine. I accept what the Committee on Climate Change said about the need for a faster rate of improvement in the years up to 2020, and that is what our plans intend to achieve, but please do not ask us to dislocate the plans made to 2020 that start now and involve the efficient allocation of resources. Please do not ask us to sign up to something different now, instead of the things that we are doing already.

Nia Griffith: Will my hon. Friend give way?

David Kidney: I have time for one intervention.

Nia Griffith: Does my hon. Friend agree that, while the Liberal Democrat motion makes no mention of costings, the Government amendment confirms a commitment to spending up to £20 million to help Departments reduce their emissions? Is that not a very good reason to vote for the amendment?

David Kidney: I confirm what my hon. Friend says. This country already has a good track record on energy efficiency, and I agree, that energy efficiency is an important part of the entire package that will reduce our need to consume energy.
	Just today, we started on the next stage of our energy efficiency policy for domestic properties with the first of the community energy saving programme schemes-going house by house, street by street. That is the kind of approach for which many hon. Members have argued.
	In our transition plan, which has been welcomed around the country and around the world, we say that we need to move to a low-carbon transformation involving the trinity of renewables, nuclear power and clean fossil fuels. It is a shame that we cannot persuade the Conservative party to support wind power in this country to its full capacity. According to a Greenpeace report, councils controlled by Conservatives are turning down and holding up onshore planning applications around the country. Also, according to the  Financial Times today, the shadow Business Secretary said that the Tory policy is that no permission be given for onshore wind, even though it, along with offshore wind, on which we are No. 1 in the world, powered 2 million homes last year.
	Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of speaking time left, but I want to confirm one important aspect of the transformation to 2020: our passionate intention that it be a just transition from which all our citizens benefit, and that no one be left behind. I want Members' suggestions for how we can ensure that the kind of things that we will introduce, such as green mortgages, the pay-as-you-save scheme, the feed-in tariffs next year, the renewable heat incentive the year after and the smart meters roll-out, benefit every citizen, including the worst off in this country-

David Howarth: claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
	 Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
	 Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
	 The House divided: Ayes 226, Noes 297.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the proposed words be there added.
	 Question agreed to.
	 The Deputy Speaker declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to (Standing Order No. 31(2)).
	 Resolved,
	That this House welcomes the 10:10 campaign as a motivator of public action to cut carbon dioxide emissions through individual and collective behaviour change; recognises the value of such campaigns to build public support for action by governments to agree an ambitious, effective and fair deal at Copenhagen; further recognises the significant effort made by individuals and organisations to cut their emissions through the 10:10 campaign; supports the Climate Change Act introduced by this Government, the first such legislation in the world, and the system of carbon budgets that enables Britain to set itself on a low carbon pathway; notes that carbon budgets ensure active policies by Whitehall departments and the public sector that deliver long-term sustained emissions reductions not just in 2010 but through to 2022 and beyond; further supports the efforts of local councils to move towards local carbon budgets by signing up to the 10:10 campaign; further welcomes the allocation of up to £20 million for central Government departments to enable them to reduce further and faster carbon dioxide emissions from their operations, estate and transport; and further welcomes the cross-cutting Public Value Programme review of the low carbon potential of the public sector, which will focus on how the sector can achieve transformational financial savings through value-for-money carbon reductions.

Business without Debate

Business of the House

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 15),
	That, at this day's sitting, the Second Reading of the Perpetuities and Accumulations Bill [ Lords] may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.-( Mr. Blizzard.)
	 Question agreed to.

PERPETUITIES AND ACCUMULATIONS BILL [ LORDS]

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Orders Nos. 59(3) and 90(5)), That the Bill be now read a Second Time.
	 Question agreed to.
	 Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With the leave of the House, we shall take motions 4 to 8 together.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

International Development

That the draft Caribbean Development Bank (Seventh Replenishment of the Unified Special Development Fund) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 17 June, be approved.

Statistics Board

That the draft Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Higher Education Student Information) Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 17 June, be approved.

Trade Union and Labour Relations

That the draft ACAS Code of Practice: Time Off for Trade Union Duties and Activities, which was laid before this House on 24 June, be approved.

Criminal Law

That the draft Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (Youth Conditional Cautions: Code of Practice) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 8 July, be approved.
	That the draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Conditional Cautions: Code of Practice) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 8 July, be approved. -(Mr. Blizzard.)
	 Question agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Again, with the leave of the House, we shall put motions 9 to 11 together.
	 Ordered,
	That the Family Proceedings Fees (Amendment) Order 2009 (S.I., 2009, No. 1499), dated 10 June 2009, be referred to a Delegated Legislation Committee.
	That the Civil Proceedings Fees (Amendment) Order 2009 (S.I., 2009, No. 1498), dated 10 June 2009, be referred to a Delegated Legislation Committee.
	That the Magistrates' Courts Fees (Amendment) Order 2009 (S.I., 2009, No. 1496), dated 10 June 2009, be referred to a Delegated Legislation Committee. -(Mr. Blizzard.)

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
	That, at the sitting on Tuesday 27 October, paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments) shall apply to the Motion in the name of Mr Peter Robinson as if the day were an Opposition Day; proceedings on the Motion may continue for three hours or until Ten o'clock, whichever is the earlier, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply. -(Mr. Blizzard.)

committees
	  
	Reform of the House of Commons

Ordered,
	That Sir George Young be discharged from the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons and Mr Peter Atkinson be added. -(Mr. Blizzard.)

West Midlands

Motion made,
	That Dr Richard Taylor be a member of the West Midlands Regional Select Committee.-( Mr. Blizzard.)

Hon. Members: Object.

Yorkshire and the Humber

Motion made,
	That Mary Creagh be discharged from the Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Select Committee and Mr Austin Mitchell be added.- (Mr. Blizzard .)

Hon. Members: Object.

South West

Motion made,
	That Linda Gilroy be discharged from the South West Regional Select Committee and Roger Berry be added.-( Mr. Blizzard .)

Hon. Members: Object.

PETITION
	  
	Gaza

David Lepper: I present a petition- [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. An important petition is being presented. If hon. Members are leaving, will they please do so quickly and quietly?

David Lepper: I present a petition on behalf of residents of Brighton and others. It is signed by Brenda Brown and 141 other residents of the Brighton area.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of residents of Brighton and others,
	Declares that the Government should fulfil its responsibilities as a high contracting party to the 4th Geneva Convention.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to immediately take steps to institute a war crimes investigation in the UK into Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip between 27 December and 18 January 2009 and for the UK prosecuting authorities to search out and prosecute (or extradite for trial elsewhere) all suspected war criminals identified by the investigation; and urges the Government to seek a binding resolution at the UN Security Council to establish an international commission of inquiry into the Gaza attacks and the referral of potential cases to the International Criminal Court.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000404]

WAR MEMORIALS

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. -(Mr. Blizzard.)

Shona McIsaac: I thank Mr. Speaker for allowing me to address the House on the subject of the nation's war memorials on the day after the launch of the annual poppy appeal.
	My interest in war memorials began some time ago. My late father served 25 years in the armed forces, and one of his postings was to NATO headquarters in Belgium. My father organised family outings to visit the war memorials in that part of Belgium and northern France to seek out names of members of my family who had died in the first world war. By a quirk of fate, I attended a Canadian school at NATO headquarters in Belgium. The school took us on outings to Vimy ridge, where many Canadians lost their lives in the first world war. I was a teenager at the time, and seeing those cemeteries left a lasting impression on me-the symmetry of the white headstones, the stillness and quiet. But what stuck in my mind was the age of so many of the men-young boys really-who died when just a few years older than me.
	When the family returned to Britain, I started to notice the village war memorials, big war memorials in towns, rolls of honour in churches, memorial plaques and many other forms of remembrance, not just from the first world war but from other conflicts. I got a sense that without graves at which to mourn, there had been a great upwelling of feeling in this country at the end of the first world war. Public subscriptions enabled memorials to be erected so that people had somewhere to go and grieve, and to remember the people whom they had lost in the Great War. That was not just for families; it was for communities. It was, in fact, for society. It was to ensure that none of us would ever forget those who had lost their lives in that conflict-as, indeed, none of us should ever forget those who are currently fighting for our country.
	Every Remembrance day when, attending the main ceremony, I lay a wreath in Cleethorpes outside St. Peter's church, I remember the cemeteries in France and Belgium. I remember the lives cut short. I think of all who are serving now, and of all who have lost their lives in more recent conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq and, now, Afghanistan.
	I remember that when I had just been elected-it was one of those bitterly cold November days-standing with all the civil dignitaries, ready to lay my wreath, and thinking This is not the only memorial in the constituency; there are many, many others. There are small village memorials, and there are memorials in other churches. I made a little promise to myself that I would do my best to visit each and every memorial in my constituency. That has led me, over the past decade, to begin to record the names of the people commemorated on those memorials, and also to explore a little about their family backgrounds and the lives that they led. The period that I am discussing was one of great social change in Britain, certainly in the area that I represent. Because of the growth in the fishing industry, it was a time when thousands of people flocked to Grimsby and Cleethorpes to earn money. The whole social history is absolutely fascinating.
	One of the memorials that I visited during my exploration of the constituency was in a very small village in the Lincolnshire wolds called Wold Newton. The names on the memorial cross had faded and almost vanished, but I took a photograph and put it on the computer. Having used all sorts of effects, I eventually managed to transcribe the names of four who died in the first world war and one who died in the Boer war, but I think that by now, because of increased weathering, those names have probably faded completely.
	That was when I really began to think about the problem of memorials that have been weathered and memorials that are neglected. We must face the fact that although most memorials are well loved, not all of them are. I want to make people aware that those memorials exist. Although the families who raised money for them obviously wanted the names to be there for evermore, the names have faded.
	That is why I feel so passionately that we must restore the war memorials in this country. It is not just about memorials that have faded or have been neglected; there is also the issue of development. Some memorials are threatened by demolition and road-building schemes, for instance. I know that there are memorials in many factories, workplaces and schools.

Andrew Pelling: I am delighted that the hon. Lady has initiated this debate. She has mentioned schools. The issue of war memorials in schools has a particular resonance at a time when the country is involved in conflict. I have been lobbied by Mr. Michael Lyons of the Royal British Legion in New Addington, in Croydon, about the efforts being made to preserve school memorials when demolition is planned. A great deal of activity has taken place in relation to Building Schools for the Future. A very good ceremony took place in Applegarth school in New Addington last week, when dead men's pennies from the first world war were put in a permanent exhibition. That will enable young people to have a good sense of remembrance of those who served our country so well.

Shona McIsaac: I am glad that I accepted the hon. Gentleman's intervention, in which he illustrated beautifully the way in which memorials are under threat. They are not all in listed buildings; in fact, three memorials in my local party office have been saved. If we had not done that, I dread to think where they might have gone. Luckily, some others have gone into local archives, for example. People just think of the main, free-standing memorials, and often forget that in many public buildings-schools, hospitals, fire stations and post offices-there were memorials to many other people who signed up, perhaps in the pals' battalions, in the first world war. They are very telling memorials, and we must not let them be destroyed or neglected.
	Knowing that I had secured this debate-and also because we are approaching the launch of the annual poppy appeal-on Friday I tabled early-day motion 2070. Many Members have already signed it, and I want to read it out as it summarises my emotions about this issue:
	That this House praises the British Legion's Roll of Honour, English Heritage, Historic Scotland, the War Memorials Trust, the Imperial War Museum and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for their work dedicated to commemorating those who have died as a result of conflict and to preserving war memorials in the UK and abroad; calls upon the Government to examine ways of assisting communities to preserve and restore the UK's war memorials and rolls of honour in advance of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914; and further calls on the Government to establish a national code of practice to protect war memorials from destruction, and to have a national day of commemoration on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.
	All the organisations I mention, such as the War Memorials Trust, do tremendous work. There is now a national inventory of war memorials, but it has only two full-time members of staff, although it has many volunteers. We have five years before there will be a lot of services of remembrance not only here, but throughout Europe and America, as well as in Australia and New Zealand because of the Anzac forces. We must do our bit. We must ensure that all our memorials are brought up to scratch in advance of that 100th anniversary. Five years seems a long way off, but I know that if we do not start doing something now, and if there is not a co-ordinated approach, some of the neglected memorials will remain neglected.

Stephen Pound: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the tone she has struck in this timely and relevant debate. May I say to her, however, that I cannot imagine that any free-standing war memorial or cenotaph would be subsumed in building works, as I think most local authorities would make absolutely sure that that did not happen? She rightly and percipiently put her finger on another problem, which concerns memorials other than the free-standing ones. May I urge her to do something that I am sure she has already done, which is to encourage every Member of this House to contact the Royal British Legion, which is the custodian of the fallen, if ever there is any question of any plaque or memorial in any way being threatened? If that were the case, I would expect the Royal British Legion to contact its local Member, and I think well enough of this House to believe that no Member would turn aside a request from the Royal British Legion to honour our fallen.

Shona McIsaac: My hon. Friend makes an important point, and he is right. The Royal British Legion has what it calls its roll of honour, and it has been asking volunteers to record the names on memorials throughout the country.
	The problem, however, is knowing where the memorials are. When I first started doing this, I was thinking about cemetery gates, rolls of honour in churches, memorial plaques and so on, but I have discovered many more that I did not know existed. Although I knew this one existed, for example, I have asked many residents in my area whether they have noticed the first world war memorial in the main post office in Grimsby, and they tell me that they have not. That memorial was saved from a building that was demolished, but the one for the fire service is locked away in an archive. The issue is all about knowing whether memorials exist. If we do not know that memorials are in boarded-up buildings, particularly factories and redundant schools, that is a problem. A national inventory is so vital, because we have to get those things on record. Then we can contact the Legion to ensure that the memorials are protected.
	Although the last Tommy has passed away, the number of people attending remembrance parades has increased in recent years-certainly in the past decade. That is because of things such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, where one can input the names of family members and find out about people. Intriguingly, as we approach the 100th anniversary of world war one an increasing number of people are becoming interested in this issue. That is why I am calling for a national day of commemoration similar to what the French do-they have what they call their days of patromoine, when public buildings are opened up. It would be wonderful to see churches, schools and council buildings in this country-wherever the more hidden memorials can be found-opened up. We could restore the memorials and open the doors, so that people can see the memorials and pay their respects. That would help tourism too, because people visit places to see memorials. It would be a real boost to this country's economy if we could co-ordinate that.
	I shall end my speech with a little local story. I know that sport is the normal brief of my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), who is on the Front Bench for this debate, so I shall briefly discuss the footballers who enlisted in the 17th Battalion, the Middlesex Regiment in the first world war. One of those to enlist was the Grimsby Town football club captain, Sid Wheelhouse. In France, the various battalions played against each other to try to win the British Expeditionary Force Football Association Cup. Being professional footballers, the 17th Battalion had the edge and sailed though to the final, which was set for 11 April 1915. The 17th Battalion met the 34th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery and were decisive winners, by a score of 11-0. Tommy Lonsdale, Sid Wheelhouse and Dave Kenny from Grimsby Town were in the winning team, but by September the following year Sid Wheelhouse had become another casualty of the war. He was a well-respected player of his day-almost its David Beckham.
	St. Aidan's church is across the road from Blundell Park, where Grimsby Town play and where I believe my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) has been.

Stephen Pound: Sadly, many times.

Shona McIsaac: A memorial in the form of a wooden wall plaque in the Lady chapel in that church records the names of the many, many men who lived in north Cleethorpes-it was called New Cleethorpes at the time-who lost their lives in the first world war. Many of them were trawlermen. Hundreds of men from that community died when trawlers were hit; the number is phenomenal. One of the names on that memorial is S. Wheelhouse. He lived across the road from the ground and St. Aidan's was his local church. That is one of the memorials where the names are fading away; some of them are barely legible now.
	It is those sorts of memorials that I want to see restored. They sometimes do not fit the criteria to get grants, because they are not necessarily in listed buildings or in conservation areas. This Remembrance Sunday, we will all be reading our prayers and we will remember these people. If we can bring all our memorials up to scratch by getting them all restored in advance of the 100th anniversary of the first world war, that would be a fantastic tribute not only to those people but for the future.
	I would hate it if, at some point in the future, the names that are now being recorded on war memorials-those of people who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan-were to fade away. That is what is happening to these first world war names, and I would not want it to happen to our forces who are currently serving in Afghanistan, either. We owe that to all our forces and to all the people who have fought for our country.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) for securing the slot for this debate on an important subject. I am deeply grateful for the way in which she has presented the issue. It is clear from her speech how emotionally involved she has become in this issue and in ensuring, through her useful website, that her constituents learn about the men and women whose names are on the war memorials in their local area. She demonstrates the diversity of war memorials: from plaques to obelisks to more elaborate structures. I believe that her web address is www.shonamcisaac.com and I am sure that many people will want to have a look at the site.
	War memorials are of course a very special part of our environment; they help us to remember and to celebrate the lives and contributions of those men and women who gave so much to protect the freedoms of our country. They remain a vital, and sadly, still necessary part of modern life as young men and women continue to do their duty serving at home and in foreign parts. I was particularly struck by my hon. Friend's reference to the 100th anniversary of the first world war, and I agree that we need to ensure that preparations are in place to commemorate that in five years' time. I shall take note of her point so that we can ensure that those preparations are in place.
	Memorials are also important to the communities in which they are situated and I know that, up and down the country, many people voluntarily ensure that memorials continue to be a fitting tribute by undertaking cleaning and maintenance. I want to offer the Government's sincere thanks to those who volunteer in this way.
	The subject of the debate is the protection, conservation and restoration of war memorials, and I believe that the Government have a good record in each of these areas. I shall deal with each of them in turn. A useful first step would be to ensure that we know about the nation's stock of war memorials. I note of course the contents of my hon. Friend's early-day motion 1829, which calls for a national record of-and enhanced protection from developers-for war memorials. I have noted also the content of early-day motion 2070, and I echo her support for the work of the groups that she mentioned.
	On the subject of a national register, I am pleased to report that we already have one in operation. The United Kingdom national inventory of war memorials started in 1989 and was initially a joint project between the Imperial War museum and the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England, which is now part of English Heritage. The inventory continues to be supported by the Imperial War museum, which is in turn supported by my Department. I take the point about the two members of staff and we will have a look at what can be done to ensure that, in addition to the volunteers, we can ensure that we are adequately resourced.
	I pay tribute to the two hon. Members who intervened on my hon. Friend-the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound)-for their contributions and for ensuring that we keep this important issue in our minds, especially at this time. The aim of the inventory is eventually to have the story of each memorial in the country-its building, its unveiling and its significance to community life-within its archive. The inventory is a work in progress, and anyone who keeps records of memorials could help by sharing any information that they have.
	As time goes on and the information becomes more complete, perhaps the inventory can consider whether there is a role it could usefully fulfil in showing us where protection might be lacking. Although the inventory is staffed by the Imperial War museum, I and those who work on it are very grateful for the work of large numbers of volunteer recorders and photographers. The inventory would be very grateful for any further offers of help with administration, fieldwork or research in addition to the support of the Royal British Legion.
	Let me move on to the issue of protection. We have heard calls for enhanced protection for war memorials. Protection of war memorials is based on their status as listed buildings, parts of listed buildings and scheduled ancient monuments, or on their situation in conservation areas, and there are already a range of powers at the disposal of Government, its agencies, and local authorities, to ensure that such memorials are well cared for. Again, I am aware that I have not mentioned some of the possibilities, and I undertake to help my hon. Friend to ensure that the ones that she mentioned are included.
	Any works to memorials that are listed, scheduled or in a conservation area will require the appropriate consents from the local authority or the Secretary of State, to ensure that they are in the best interests of the preservation of the memorial and its setting. Where a memorial is situated in a listed building, consents will be required from the local authority for any changes or for removal. Where proper steps are not being taken for the preservation of a listed memorial, a local authority has the power to undertake any repairs considered necessary, and it can then seek repayment from the owners for the cost of those repairs.
	Ultimately, a local authority could compulsorily purchase a listed memorial to ensure its proper care and maintenance, and English Heritage is also able to exercise those powers in London. The Secretary of State also has reserve powers in this area but, thankfully, they are seldom needed or used. In respect of any memorial, listed or not, the War Memorials (Local Authorities' Powers) Act 1923 allows local authorities to carry out works, whether or not the memorial is in their ownership.
	We consider that war memorials situated inside a listed church building of a major denomination-and there are many memorials within Church of England churches-are best cared for by the relevant denomination. The biggest denominations have their own stringent systems of care under the ecclesiastical exemption, and they provide excellent care for listed churches and their contents.

Shona McIsaac: The Minister has mentioned Church of England churches, but increasingly former Methodist chapels are being sold for residential purposes. The same is true of redundant Church of England buildings. What is the situation when a church becomes redundant? Who has responsibility for the memorials in it?

Gerry Sutcliffe: My hon. Friend raises a fair point, and I undertake to write to her about how we can deal with the situation that she describes. We need volunteers to help us identify where memorials are located, but we also need to determine what we can do, in addition to the powers that we have already, when buildings change use.
	I realise that many war memorials might not be classed as, or situated in, listed buildings, but if a memorial represents a building of historic or architectural significance, an application can be made to English Heritage to have it considered for listing. Where neither a memorial nor the building in which it is situated merit listed building status, the Government's draft planning policy statement for the historic environment, currently out for consultation, encourages local authorities and owners to agree between them the significance of a building or its parts. In that way, and in advance of any application for planning consent, they can reach an understanding about what can or cannot be changed.
	I note that the London boroughs of Harrow, Bromley and Bexley keep registers of the war memorials situated in their areas in order to inform relevant planning decisions, and that two more boroughs are planning similar lists. That is certainly an approach to be encouraged, and I suggest that authorities should work with the national inventory wherever possible. Beyond statutory recognition and processes, however, and whether or not memorials are historically significant, there will always also be a role for local communities in making sure that memorials are respected for what they are and what they signify.
	As the hon. Member for Croydon, Central said, there is also a role for educators in making sure that people respect the legacy of those who gave their lives, and the tributes made to them. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes, I of course deplore any acts of vandalism that damage our memorials. I should also like to add my thanks to the Royal British Legion, English Heritage, the War Memorials Trust, the Imperial War museum and the National Memorial Arboretum, especially for their work with educators and children in making sure that memorials are understood and kept for future generations.
	English Heritage is helping us to recognise where memorials might be at risk, and where intervention might be needed. Last year, it launched its heritage-at-risk register, which sets out the buildings listed at the highest grades, and the scheduled ancient monuments, that are considered to be either at risk through neglect and decay, or vulnerable to becoming so. I am pleased to report that, out of the more than 5,000 entries on the register, the number of purpose-built memorials is only just in double figures, and that just four are war memorials.
	Although I do not consider it appropriate this evening to name those memorials considered to be at risk, suffice it to say that English Heritage has the matter in hand on all of them. One memorial is in local authority ownership, and English Heritage is preparing to work with the authority and a local group to ensure its preservation. The others are, respectively, in private ownership, in the care of a charitable trust and in joint ownership. English Heritage is in discussions over all three. It is carrying out repairs in one case, in discussion with the local authority, and offering grants for repair in the other two cases. All in all, it is not a bad picture considering that there are approximately 1,200 listed war memorials.
	The help being offered by English Heritage in these cases brings me to the range of assistance that is on offer to those conserving and restoring memorials, by way of funding and guidance in the technical matters of restoration and maintenance. English Heritage and the Wolfson Foundation, in association with the War Memorials Trust, provide grants for the repair and conservation of freestanding war memorials in England. These grants enable those who are responsible for the upkeep of war memorials to carry out repair projects to a high standard. To date, over £600,000 has been offered to 250 projects. The War Memorials Trust has its own separate grant scheme.
	The Department for Culture, Media and Sport operates the memorials grant scheme, which makes grants to registered charities and faith groups equivalent to the VAT incurred in making repairs to, or establishing, public memorial structures, including war memorials. To date, the scheme has given out more than £1.5 million UK-wide. A significant proportion of this has helped to establish the armed forces memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum, but many other grants have been made for the repair of war memorials across the UK. My hon. Friend's website mentions some memorials in her constituency where the names, as she said, have become illegible. Where such memorials are in the care of charities or Church groups, a grant under this scheme could help with restoration.
	The sister scheme to the memorials grant scheme, the listed places of worship grant scheme, will also make grants equivalent to the VAT costs of making repairs to memorials that form part of the fabric of a listed church building. In addition, the Heritage Lottery Fund, distributing funding from the lottery good causes contribution, has made 36 grants, totalling £17,369,308 where projects have involved the conservation or repair of war memorials or have sought to increase awareness of their significance and meaning. English Heritage cares for six of the capital's most important memorials, including the Cenotaph. Altogether, there is a great deal of financial help out there for those who need it when caring for memorials.
	I have noted my hon. Friend's comments about how we could go further. It was right and proper that she raised the issue. We are working to maintain our memorials, and I look forward to working with her and other colleagues across the House to make sure that we protect the memorials to those who gave their lives for this country.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.